Swattie of 2009, let's say hi!

<p>I am not a student, but here is a list:</p>

<p>SWARTHMORE COLLEGE RESIDENCE HALLS FOR NEW STUDENTS</p>

<p>Swarthmore's residence halls are fairly comfortable and generally attractive. Each room is equipped with beds (twin extra-long), desks, desk chairs, dressers, bookshelves, closets, phones (with voice mail capacity), overhead lights, door message boards, and computer connections. Residence Halls have coin-operated laundry facilities and at least one kitchen. Generally there is a small public computer cluster containing a printer in each building. We do not have information about room or window sizes.</p>

<p>Dana and Hallowell
“Danawell” is a pair of modern, identical buildings that stand adjacent to each other near the Crum woods. They share a joint lounge in a trailer where activities from TV watching to parties and meetings take place. First-year students’ doubles are spacious, but can be dim due to being in a wooded setting. Rooms have cream-colored curtains, bulletin boards, door message boards, and dressers that are built into the closets. Walls are white cement block. Almost every room has carpeting with the exception of rooms ending in 13, 14, 15, or 16 which have tile floors. The large bay windows tend to admit some cold air in the winter, so a few blankets or an electric blanket are a must. There are picture rails in the room for hanging pictures- bring S hooks.</p>

<p>Mary Lyons 4
ML has the charm of an older building. The windows have shades and the floors are wood. Because the dorm is a fifteen-minute walk from the center of campus, many ML residents us bicycles (edit- not true. A bike is useful, but only a couple people use them with any regularity, mostly because the way to campus is all uphill, making the trip up not too much quicker. The trip back is quicker, but then, getting back is usually not as urgent as getting there.) There is a large indoor storage room for bicycles in the building. At night, and usually in the morning, the college operates a shuttle bus service that makes frequent runs between campus and the residence hall. There is also a breakfast room with the best-cooked breakfast at the college for residents who’d rather not make the walk to the dining hall. Mary Lyon’s separation from other residence halls helps build a strong sense of unity and spirit. Mary Lyons has a small computer lab with a printer.</p>

<p>Mertz
Just off Chester Road near the train station, Mertz holds students from all four class (edit- not true for ’04-’05… sophomores will not be housed in Mertz, just freshman, juniors, and seniors). There are three floors in the building, each containing a lounge/kitchenette area. First-year student doubles can be fairly large, with walk-in closets. Rooms are carpeted, walls are painted cinderblock and burlap and there are shades on the windows.</p>

<p>Parrish
Swarthmore’s original building, Parrish is located at the center of campus. The first floor and part of the second are used for administrative offices. The halls are single sex with men living in the west wing and women in the east. Parrish contains a large number of singles for upper class students. Rooms for incoming students are doubles and triples. Most floors are wood and windows have shades. Closet space is limited. Parrish is the one residence hall open during the winter break in January so expect that someone will use your room during this time. </p>

<p>Wharton
Wharton has three sections, two of which house first-year students. Many of the remaining rooms are singles for upper-class students. Incoming students live in doubles or two or three-room quads. The doubles may be large. In quads the students generally switch places at mid-year so that each resident gets a change to live in the different types of space (unless a special needs student is assigned to a specific space in the quad for the year.) Floors are carpeted (except rooms 101-105 which have tile floors). Windows have shades. Closet space can be limited. Some rooms have very few electrical outlets, so UL approved extension cords are a must. There are picture rails in the rooms for hanging pictures so bring S hooks for hanging.</p>

<p>Willets
This Residence Hall houses mostly first-year students and sophomores with a sprinkling of juniors. It contains nearly a quarter of the entering class and can be an excellent place to meet fellow incoming students. Almost all rooms are doubles with carpets and white curtains. Rooms have large windows and adequate closet space. Particularly extensive lounge space makes for attractive study areas/social gatherings.</p>

<p>Here's a link to the same info, but with pictures:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/students/enteringstudents/halls.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.swarthmore.edu/students/enteringstudents/halls.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The list of dorms housing freshmen could change next year. For example, it is possible that some freshmen could be assigned to the New Dorm, next to Mertz. Also, the renovation of Parrish should be complete. The construction of the New Dorm last year and the renovation of Parrish this year has kind of turned the housing lottery on its head as Parrish is historically very popular, but not so much while it is a construction site. Conversely, early signs indicate that the New Dorm will be one of the most popular lottery picks as it is super nice.</p>

<p>Freshmen are assigned to doubles in most, but not all of the dorms on campus. Upperclass choose rooms through a lottery.</p>

<p>The most desirable dorms on campus never last long enough for sophmores to choose them in the lottery. So Wharton and Mertz (this year) have no sophmores. Instead they have a bunch of freshmen in all of the doubles and juniors and seniors in the singles. Sophmores basically have no prayer of a single in the lottery.</p>

<p>Conversely, Willets is probably the least popular dorm in the lottery with very few singles, so it tend to be mostly freshmen and sophmores.</p>

<p>Willets, Mertz, Dana/Hollowell are all fairly "new" dorms, built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. So they are all reasonable "modern" with cinderblock construction. Parrish, Wharton, and Mary Lyons are all old buildings with a lot of charm.</p>

<p>Willets has been "the party dorm" at Swathmore for decades, although the Dean of Housing has been doing a little social engineering in recent years to reduce the critical mass of party kids. For example, assigning several halls in the dorm for freshman who indicate a preference for no drinking, quiet, study-oriented dorm living. This seems to have worked, although with its concentration of freshmen and sophmores, Willets is probably still more lively than dorms that have a high concentration of juniors and seniors.</p>

<p>The Dean of Housing does try to honor requests for a particular dorm, with the exception of Wharton. Too many people request it. The biggest choice you have to make is whether you want single-sex or coed housing. Single-sex means that all the rooms on your hall will be guys or girls. If you choose this option, you will be in Parrish. Coed (for freshmen) means guys and girls on the same hall, girls assigned to one room, guys to the next etc., with separate girls and guys bathrooms on the hall.</p>

<p>As a practical matter, unless you get assigned to Mary Lyons as a freshman and decide to keep lotterying into ML, you will probably live in at least three, if not four, different dorms while at Swat.</p>

<p>A little more info on Mertz. It has a huge open stairway in the center of the building. An adjoining common room has vaulted two-story ceiling, a rock fireplace, and a big-screen TV. Each floor has a big kitchen/lounge/common room with a little TV. The rooms and halls are what I would call "pretty nice" institutional. Bathrooms are nice.</p>

<p>Some dorm rumors from when I was there:</p>

<p>I was unequivocally warned to stay the heck away from ML (Mary Lyons). It's off campus, first off. And basically...it's the SWIL dorm. SWIL is the Swarthmore Wardens of Imaginative Literature. It's a dorm for people who enjoy role playing, anime, LAN parties, and fantasy-esque stuff. And not people who are kinda interested in it, people who are downright passionate about it. Honestly I did not hear a single good thing about it the entire 3 days I was there. </p>

<p>I stayed in Mertz. It was really nice, except it seemed to be mostly doubles which I don't like. It had a big, fairly clean kitchen on the second floor and a smaller one on the first. It's supposed to be one of the more social of the dorms. I liked everyone I met there, too. A little insular, but not so much.</p>

<p>Some friends stayed in Willets (either that or Wharton, I can't remember), and it was quite the party. I liked the dorm.</p>

<p>To defend ML: I stayed there in my overnight, and loved it. Yes, it is for people who are passionate about fantasy etc. ... but then again Swarthmore is, imo, basically about being passionate. The people I met there were amazingly friendly, and I certaintly saw nothing in the slightest wrong with the dorm.</p>

<p>And each bathroom is only shared by 4 people (2 rooms only connect to each bathroom.) And they have their own breakfast hall.</p>

<p>And what, really, is a 10min walk? We all could probably use the excercise...</p>

<p>And yea, I plan to ask to live in ML.</p>

<p>"And what, really, is a 10min walk? We all could probably use the excercise..."</p>

<p>When it's freezing cold and you have to walk Swarthmore's hills, that walk is no easy thing. There is a shuttle that runs during peak hours every 15 minutes or so, but most people I know that live in ML make the walk more often than take the shuttle.
In terms of physical appearance and the size of rooms, ML is one of the nicest dorms. The semi-private bathrooms are a plus. But it has a very distinctive culture, and if you don't belong to that, I recommend you avoid it. In the roommate questionnaires, there is a poll of interests and chances are, if you don't put a check next to sci-fi/fantasy, you won't end up in ML.</p>

<p>"But it has a very distinctive culture, and if you don't belong to that, I recommend you avoid it." </p>

<p>That's really all I meant. I have nothing against people passionate about sci-fi or fantasy, and it's good they have passion for something. It's just definitely not my thing, and I'm sure other people would like to know about it beforehand so they don't unknowingly choose ML because it sounds nice physically.</p>

<p>A note about single sex housing and Parrish: Construction is scheduled to be complete by fall 2005 but who knows- the New Dorm was supposed to be done by mid-October, and it's still under construction. If you want to avoid Parrish, choose not to be in a single sex hall.
The New Dorm is going to house freshmen, from what I hear. Based on my occasional visits, it is a VERY nice place to be. Air conditioned halls, high ceilings, relatively large rooms (even by Swat standards, which are higher than most places). A couple of DESHI members held a ****tail party in their loft double and it was a most swanky room, regardless of the soiree itself.</p>

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<p>As far as I know, all freshman housing (and virtually all sophmore housing) at Swat is doubles. Most juniors can get singles, although some people might choose a super-nice double over a single in a less desireable dorm. For example, those loft-doubles in the New Dorm are hot in the lottery.</p>

<p>Wharton is probably the nicest dorm available to freshmen. But, since requests for Wharton aren't honored, the only way to get in Wharton is to state no preference on the freshman housing form and roll the dice.</p>

<p>The second most popular dorm, based on the lottery results would be Mertz for coed or Parrish for single-sex. </p>

<p>Willets is atypical because it has so few juniors and seniors. Mary Lyons IS a hike -- definitely "off-campus". Dana and Hollowell are OK, but the design of the halls makes them a little less "social" than some of the other dorms.</p>

<p>Wow! This is unbelievable. My Swarthmore information folder is getting bigger and bigger! I still have the printout of the first post I got from Interesteddad (for which I can never thank you enough) with admissions tips, and now all of this dorm information. What a wonderful college culture and population, with parents and students still coming here to be generous and helpful. I'm so glad my daughter will be going there.</p>

<p>This was written by one of the students for the class of '08</p>

<p>As a disclaimer, this is just one
person's experience in the dorm, and by no means do I claim you'll experience
everything or that this will be the extent of your experience. Your college
experience is <em>your</em> college experience. So, with that...</p>

<p>A little background and description:<br>
Mary Lyon is a former girl's school building bought by Swarthmore and turned
into a dorm. It has 3 above ground floors and a basement level that was
renovated in the summer of 2002 (believe me, it was pretty nasty before
that). The floors are connected by two inside staircases and two staircases
on the outside, one of which is a fire escape. Each floor is co-ed,
traditionally with guys on one side of the hall and girls on the other. This
arrangement is due to the wonderful fact of ML's suite bathrooms- in normal
cases there are 4 students of the same gender that share a bathroom connecting
two rooms. The halls are carpeted, while the rooms are I think varnished wood
floor. However, the aforementioned only applies on the above-ground floors. </p>

<p>The first floor houses mostly freshmen, and is one of the smaller halls: it's
about one third the size of the two floors above it. This is because the rest
of the floor contains the spacious main lounge, the small computer room, the
large breakfast room, and the main kitchen. I guess I'll start with occupancy
first, though: The only upperclassmen rooms are the RA, the "fishbowl", which
houses 3 people, and a remote double across from the breakfast room area.<br>
Because of this, the hall has more of an advantage in group activities, like
going to dinner together. A word of warning: bathrooms on this hall face the
driveway and ML is a building with plenty of windows. Mind the people passing
by and pull the shades.</p>

<p>As for the other parts of the first floor: The lounge comes with couches, a
small cable TV, and is usually the place of studying, study breaks, and random
games, whether it's Wink, full contact red light green light, or some variant
of Soul Calibur. Of course, this depends on dorm occupants, but the dorm
atmosphere is usually one that encourages activities open to the whole dorm.<br>
This is all reflected in the games, the walks to dinner together, and even
usual tables that ML'ers eat at. Getting back on track, the computer room (as
of this writing) has two Macs and one PC as well as the printer. (Just
reminding everyone now that printing at Swat is free and you can connect your
computers to the dorm printer through the network. Just watch the paper,
please.) The Breakfast Room will be described in its own section. Cause it's
just that special.</p>

<p>The second floor has 3 wings, 2 side wings and a center section. The
center section and the right wing (just geographically, folks, Swat's still a
liberal place) house upperclassmen while the 3rd section contains freshmen.<br>
The freshmen wing also has the hall lounge, which is connected to the fire
escape. Special features of this hall are its two barn doubles and the
quint. The two barn doubles are a few of the biggest rooms on campus; alas,
they are not available to frosh. But keep that in mind when doing the
lottery, eh? The quint is located opposite the barn doubles, and is two
doubles and a single that share a bathroom. Once again, nice and spacey.</p>

<p>The third floor is a lot like the second floor, and so probably gets short
shrift in this description. Sorry. Once again, about 1/3rd of its occupants
are frosh. The other side of the hall has a small, respectable lounge and
also a tiny kitchen area.</p>

<p>Rooms:
The rooms themselves are really comparable to the ones on campus, if not
larger. You might want to bring some rugs or something for the floors, as the
regular wooden floor gets dusty and occasionally leaves varnish/whatever it is
flakes. There's also usually a mirror hanging from the wall or on the closet
door, and like all rooms on campus, a bed, bookshelf, drawer, desk, chair,
telephone, and closet area per student is provided. Heating wise, heat
throughout the building is done by the radiators (somewhat inconveniently)
located in each room. Warning: these can be somewhat noisy. And noises can
be scary. And as a rule for dorm heating, sometimes it just plain isn't up to
par. Note well that also the building has no system of cooling, so you'll
haveta resort to opening the windows. Unless you're into sweating some
pounds, bring a fan. Really.</p>

<p>The Breakfast Room:
The Breakfast Room and accompanying kitchen is the dining hall of ML,
furnished with some couches, an enormous wooden table, a microwave, and iron
cow (ok, so it's just a square milk dispenser, but that's what it is.)<br>
There's also an old upright piano, but as it's usually out of tune, musically
unresponsive, and obnoxious to residents above and below and nearby, it's
generally not touched so much. But I digress. The Breakfast Room allows ML
residents the chance to eat breakfast in the dorm, and also employs a small
number of students as cooks. Yes! You can work there! Usual breakfasts have
hot and cold food available- a rotating choice of french toast, eggs with
options, or variable pancakes for hot, and bagels, bread, cereal, muffins, etc
for cold. You still have to spend a meal credit, but it saves you the trouble
of trekking to campus for breakfast if you don't want to. Usual hours of
service are from 7:30-9 am, with workers working from 7-9:30 am from Monday-
Friday, and serving 8:30am-1pm working 8-2pm on Saturdays. Hey, it's top pay
scale, you get to cook, and get to see people. It's not a bad job. </p>

<p>In the greater scheme of things:
ML, yes, is the farthest dorm away from campus. In the greater perspective,
where some students have to shuttle from on part of a university campus to
another just for class, it's really not that bad. But in the small Swat
bubble, this is probably the biggest challenge for MLers. Located across the
street from Strath Haven condominiums (which houses upperclassmen sometimes,
and a lot of, um, elderly folks not associated with Swat), people can expect
usually a walk of at least 7 minutes from the dining hall that is Sharples,
and about 15-20 minutes from the main iconic hall of Parrish. Yeah. That's
somewhat of a pain, but it's not bad. You can cut down times by bringing a
bike, but it's not a must, and time always passes more quickly when walking
with friends. On the plus side: hey, you get more exercise than students
living on campus, those slackers, and it's a great way to learn time
management when you realize a trip to campus for one purpose and then back
will take you about 40 minutes. And you'll know where the Activities Center
(home to Aikido and Folk Dance at the time of this writing) and Athletic
buildings are. And hey, you get to live in ML. On the other hand, time is
precious, you can't hop over to another dorm quickly, you might not care about
the exercise, and who gives a flip about where those buildings are? Ok,
really, it's all in how you look at it. Perspective, baby, perspective.
As a side note, if you do bring a bike, rest assured that there are plenty of
bike racks on campus. </p>

<p>::whine:: That's too far/It's too much walking/I'm lazy/Whatever:
Ok, ok. A shuttle service, driven by your fellow students, is also available,
running from Parrish circle to PPR (the other satellites that happen to be
closer) to ML and back. In the morning a shuttle runs every 15 minutes from
7:30-9:30am, while nights are 6-3 am (5-3 daylight savings hours) going every
10 minutes from 9pm-12am and every 20 minutes other times. Now, keep in mind
that these are other students driving your shuttles, so while we're all
grateful, it also means that the shuttles can be unreliable, and sometimes
you'll just have to walk it. (Also, consequently, there's that issue of
SNOW. Which many people can't drive in. So bring boots.)</p>

<p>Atmosphere:
So I've gone on and on and on about ML itself, but really, what about living
there? Well, I'd like to think that it's really a nice place to live.<br>
Sometimes it gets described as the bubble within the Swarthmore bubble, but
really, the distance has had some positive influences as well. It's not
unusual to know many of the people within the dorm from each hall, and a lot
of fun activities go on, and it's not hard to navigate around the building
once you realize it's in a big "L" shape. A lot of opportunities bring the
dorm together, like eating meals together, the chance to cook together with
not one but two functional kitchens, and walking back and forth from campus,
and games, and general commiseration of being students, etc- so really, those
chances are all there if you make yourself available. You'll find people
passionate in there interests anywhere in Swat and the residents of ML won't
be any different- the movies they love, the TV shows, their activities, their,
uh, card games... That said, living in any dorm by no means dictates your
social life. It's quite possible to stay on campus all day with your friends
there and then just sleep in your room and start the day over again, and
there's nothing wrong with that. It's all a matter of personal choice, but
the only way you'll really feel isolated in ML or anywhere is if you decide to
hole up in the room yourself</p>

<p>Freshman are not housed solely in doubles. Most of the quads in Wharton house freshman and there are triples in Parrish. The quads, for the most part, are very spacious, with two singles connected to a double, except for two quads on the third floor which have two doubles. The occupants switch places after first semester.</p>

<p>searchingavalon : Can I see this post about admissions? Thanks!</p>

<p>I mean this one.. "I still have the printout of the first post I got from Interesteddad (for which I can never thank you enough) with admissions tips"</p>

<p>"I was unequivocally warned to stay the heck away from ML (Mary Lyons)."</p>

<p>Me too, for all the same reasons. There was another that was a bit more bacchanalian, but we don't have to get into that here!</p>

<p>No one seems to talk much about Dana or Hallowell, but I really enjoyed them. I thought the riot-proof hallways were hilarious and the people were great. From what was said, however, Hallowell is the "marijuana dorm." I only smelled it once that night, though, so it's not like the entire building is lighting up. (Coincidentally, Dana is smoke-free).</p>

<p>I like Parrish's central location, maybe I'll request single-sex halls if I get in and enroll.</p>

<p>Hallowell is the only not smoke-free dorm, so it tends to house exceptionally high number of smokers...</p>

<p>commongi, I looked but unfortunately cannot find that thread in the archives, and am uncomfortable typing out someone's post without their express permission. You might consider looking through the threads on the Swarthmore site (current and old) for advice. I will say, however, that doing an overnight--in part to get a feel for what it would be like to be a student there and in part to have material for the Why Swarthmore essay, was a particularly great piece of advice, for anyone for whom it is feasible.</p>

<p>Aww, that's a shame. Thanks anyway! I will take that advice, seeing as I went on the Discovery Weekend.</p>

<p>Hi,
I think you have to go to the old forum <a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.collegeconfidential.com/discus&lt;/a> and do the search there. Search by poster name 'searchingavalon' in the Parents' Forum only.</p>

<p>Sorry for posting it - don't have interesteddad's permission..</p>

<p>Ah...now I know how to post the url:
<a href="http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/92106.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/92106.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Thanks, Achat. I didn't think of using the search engine; I just kept scrolling forever through the names of threads.</p>