<p>What are the significance and differences of the house system?</p>
<p>Students are arbitrarily assigned to houses based on their dorm preferences. So you rank a dorm first, you list the kind of housing situation you want, and the house will be assigned to you. </p>
<p>Most dorms have several houses in them; a house can be demarcated as a section of a hallway or a floor. </p>
<p>Houses at UChicago are distinct from “houses” at other places in a variety of ways:</p>
<p>-- Houses do not have reputations, but dorms do. When I was in the College Pierce was known as a very spirited dorm, and Henderson liked to flaunt itself as the most spirited house in the most spirited dorm. But the students in Henderson House did not choose to live in Henderson instead of Thompson, Tufts, or Shorey, which were all in Pierce; instead, they chose Pierce first and were arbitrarily assigned a house. While there is some “drama” over dorm selection, there is almost no “drama” over house assignment.</p>
<p>-- Houses have internal leadership of an RA undergraduate and Resident Head graduate students or University staff members. The “dorm older sibling” and “dorm parent” ease the transition to college, particularly for first-year students.</p>
<p>-- Houses have a tradition of eating meals together at the dining hall. </p>
<p>Some things that make “houses” distinct:</p>
<p>-- Not every student stays on campus all four years. Students are not required to be on campus all four years. I don’t really know what the current situation is with housing, but back in my day it was fairly popular for students to move off campus after year 2. There are a whole host of reasons this is the case, I believe, but it does mean that housing trends young and students tend to enjoy housing for the first year or so but look forward to having an apartment with friends.</p>
<p>-- Some schools (Rice and Yale, particularly, AFAIK) fund and feed (literally and figuratively) a lot of resources to the house-level unit. Chicago does not do this, or did not do this when I was there. This is a good thing in some ways the way Chicago does it, a not as good thing in other ways. Rice and Yale both have hundreds of students per “house,” Chicago’s biggest house is about 100 kids total. So for Rice and Yale, the house IS the way students get to know each other well, I’d say for Chicago most socializing and long-terms friends emerge out of student organizations.</p>
<p>I graduated in June and I’ve heard administrators talk about how they want to bolster house culture so Uchicago is as nice a place socially as Yale. Since Pierce was torn down they actually designed the new North Campus with a similar “social beehive” architectural design in mind to keep the vibrant house culture.</p>
<p>Half of my friends are from Pierce and Snell-Hitchcock and even once people started moving off campus its often the same social groups you lived with the first two years in the dorms. The other half of my friends definitely revolved around student organization (most of whom will share your common academic interests). The house system is great for having a diverse group of friends who will teach you about quantum physics and minority rights in addition to your own academic interests.</p>