<p>We are looking at the housing options for our son who was just accepted. Central or West campus dorms seem to be the most convenient to the dining hall and gym. </p>
<p>The biggest question we have is Suite vs dorm room. When I hear suite I figure several bedrooms and a common living area. NC State's definition appears to be long skinny hallway with 4 or 5 small bedrooms and a shared bathroom. The normal dorm rooms appear to be bigger than the bedrooms in the suites. Is that true?</p>
<p>I'm leaning towards telling our son to just get a normal dorm room with 1 roommate. What are the advantages of the suites--other than a "private" bathroom.</p>
<p>We just went through the dorm choice process with my daughter. We too thought that the hall dorms may be preferable but she wanted to be in the Central area and all the hall dorms there are basically reserved for certain living and learning villages which she either was not eligible for or not interested in. If you did not choose one of those villages the Central area hall dorms did not show up on the list of dorms you could choose from. (There may be an exception if you choose a specific roomate who is in one of those villages.) Anyway she chose to put each of the Tri Towers as her top 3 choices. The rooms do appear narrower than some of the hall dorms but if you read some of the responses on the Housing Qestions thread, this does not appear to be a problem for those who choose to live there.</p>
<p>I’m living in Lee right now and I LOVE living suite-style. It suits my personality better because I tend to go for having a smaller group of good friends but I know the seven other girls in my suite really well. We all go to dinner together, congregate in rooms to help each other with homework, and we’re always popping into each other’s rooms to say hi.</p>
<p>I also think suite-style is a lot more secure. College students will let basically anyone into the building as long as the person isn’t super sketchy looking, and many people in hall-style keep their doors open while they are there. That means anyone from a drunken frat-boy to an angry ex-boyfriend can come into the hallway. In my suite, there is a lock to access the stairs and elevators and then another key to get into the suite. If someone knocks on the suite door we ask who is expecting anyone and my suitemate’s friends are familiar now so I let them in if I hear them knock. We keep our doors open within the suite but we have another barrier from the outside world.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for the size of the rooms but I’m in the smallest room in Lee so my roommate and I both have our desks underneath our beds. The room is plenty big and we can fit as many friends as we need to hang out, study, or play games.</p>