Do most students and their parents choose the option to stay on campus during orientation? Where do they have you stay and do the kids room together or are they with their parent?
I can’t speak for UK but at my son’s school they spent one night in the dorms. They were assigned a random roommate but he still sees him around and they are friendly. They put the students in orientation groups and did team building tasks. It’s not bad and it’s only one or two nights.
For Merit Weekend you had to provide your own housing at UK. The housing that is at UKY has all been updated, and is pretty nice, actually they have the nicest dorms we saw our the college tours. The housing on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best rates a 10.
School was in session during the merit weekend. So dorms would have had students living in them. Orientations are over the summer so there should be dorm space. I agree the dorms are nice. Best I have seen. “Old” dorms are something like 7 years old.