I-House is very much on-campus. Stony isn’t, but it’s not far from anything.
When my kids started at Chicago, the single largest dorm was The Shoreland, which was all the way at the eastern edge of Hyde Park, just a block from the lake, and only a little closer to the quads than Vue 53. About a quarter of the entering first years were placed there. There were several other smaller off-campus dorms, too, all of which had a complement of first-years: Broadview, Blackstone, Maclean. (Stony Island was also in use at the time, but it didn’t have first-years.) It really wasn’t a problem. It didn’t get in the way of anyone’s education or socialization. My kid and kid-in-law who lived in The Shoreland thoroughly disliked the building and their rooms, but made a number of good friendships in their respective houses, and both learned that they actually liked a little physical separation between the place where they worked and the place where they lived.
In fact, my son never lived on-campus . . . and he was so enthralled by the University of Chicago that seven+ years after he graduated it’s still the place where he goes to work every day.
Most of the students will be just fine in whatever dorm or room they’re assigned. They’ll find food, friends and the ability to live on their own. The arms race of providing over-the-top luxury to students is silly.
On the other hand, it’s obviously important to the college to attract and retain top students. Part of the reason UChicago has jumped in popularity over the past few years is their increased commitment to a better student experience. From dispelling the “where fun goes to die” myth to offering more appealing accommodations, UChicago is positioning itself as not just a top academic experience but also as an appealing place to live. And frankly, this was necessary for it to remain competitive against the offerings of other top colleges.
So sure, we can put all the incoming first years back in the Shoreland and not worry if the dining halls are convenient or appealing… but that will quickly result in a drop in the number of interested applicants and top students who will attend. There’s a reason why admit rates were 30%, 40% even 50% in the not so distant past. Top students now have more information available than they did in the past and they use that to guide their selection.
It’s not reasonable to expect that every special snowflake request is honored by a team of dedicated Housing Fairies. But it’s also not a good look for the college to mislead prospective students or to not put measures in place to make arrangements for an overcrowding situation over which the college has almost total advance knowledge and control. Top students are consumers of the product being offered and they have choices; they’re intelligent enough to understand if something is a random, regrettable mistake or if they’re being mistreated. Some of this issue could have been avoided with better advance communication.
Just to be clear – the Shoreland may have had any number of serious flaws, but it most certainly was NOT where fun went to die. Except maybe in the sense that fun was pretty much in full time residence there, 24-7, so anything fun did happened at the Shoreland. If it died, that’s where it would die, too.
There is a meme on the class of 2022 page about the RD/waitlist kids all being stuck in Ihouse. It is funny. It feels better not to be alone in frustration.
As an answer to MisPollitas, my University based room assignments on GPA. That makes more sense to me. We met 2 other boys assigned to Ihouse this weekend, at an alumni send off party, and both were RD. They were both waiting for the best scholarship offers from their accepted schools, so they were also late in deciding. They were as upset as we are.
If anyone knows where to find a building layout, that would be helpful to an upset Mom. My son has a double. Rumor has it they are converting singles to doubles there. 2 large boys sharing a single is another worry. It was 80% singles,supposedly, before the summer renovation. A true double in an old building may be nice and large. I can’t find any useful room layout info anywhere online.
He is in Breckenridge House, which again, I can’t find any info, since they moved to Ihouse.
I will get him a bike ASAP. It is a long walk to food and classes.
I appreciate the comments about the AC. We are from Florida, no AC doesn’t happen here.
The rumors about singles being converted to doubles are almost certainly true. Housing needs the extra beds. But the impact on space could be minimal.
B-J is similar (old dorm, mostly singles), and the singles converted to doubles here were some of the largest rooms in the house - with well over 200 square feet of floor area. They’re normal-sized doubles now. If I-House doubles are anything like that, they should be fine.
This will all be a moot point after first year, since returning students will have their pick of rooms.
Breckenridge has a cool group of people, with some of the old dorm’s distinctive culture, and they’re very good at Scav. You could do a lot worse.
Yeah, Chicago is a different beast. He’ll want a warm coat in the winter, though.
Not sure but it sounds like there might be a bit of confusion about "singles being converted to doubles . . . ". I don’t think that means they are cramming two students into an old single? At least I hope not - my single on the 4th floor (west wing) of I-House was about 100 sf IIRC (at least that’s how it felt!). Wouldn’t they be knocking down walls and so forth to convert these rooms into doubles?
@tennismom7: google map I-House and play with the 3D a bit and you’ll get a good understanding of the exterior. Here is a blueprint of the first floor but I don’t think the “dining hall” is there anymore (good thing too - the food was horrible back in the day!). https://ihouse.uchicago.edu/sponsorships_venues/floor_plans/ I-House is quite large - the Rockefeller lounge is as good as it’s going to get for any college dorm!
A bike is a good idea but do keep in mind that your son is NOT far from classes - at least, no farther than if he lived in North or Max P. The biggest drawback, IMHO, is lack of dining in the immediate vicinity, not proximity to the quads. True - he’s a bit farther to the Reg. than those dorms! - but BJ and South aren’t exactly near the Reg. either. In any case, eveything’s within an easy mile. That’s not out of the norm for any college campus, not even another cozy private elite.
The I-House rooms where I have stayed – with two people, but two people who were fine with sharing one small bed – would not be appropriate doubles outside of a prison system or maybe the Navy…They weren’t especially large singles.
I hope walls were torn out to make singles into doubles! That is labor intensive. Is 3-months enough time?
I-House Housing page reads:
In the summer of 2018, International House will temporarily suspend Summer Quarter housing for UChicago graduate students, trainees and interns, visiting scholars and postdoctoral researchers. This suspension is due to construction and renovation work of our historic building. Our housing program will resume in the summer of 2019.
My daughter got a single in I House (neither of which she preferenced) and was a bit disappointed, but within about an hour, she had found a GroupMe for I-House in general and I-House Booth which made her feel much better. There are lots of kids in the same boat. PM me if you’d like her to invite your student to the GroupMe.
I think it looks like a very nice dorm in a so-so location. The more I read about it, I’m starting to think she may really like it. Here is a link to a pdf with typical floorplans (with dimensions!) for most of the dorms. I think maybe it’s old, so it’s not on the Uchicago website anymore: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/presentation/0b21/b93d72a40a2589b725abe344039a566cc0d1.pdf
^ Some of those dorms have been closed but this pdf file is very helpful nonetheless.
The floorplan of that I-House single is the mirror image of my old room so must be fairly representative of the singles there (everyone I knew around me and in other parts of the House had a room similar to mine in size). And that BJ single is about what my daughter’s looked like last year. Both are approximately equal dimensions on the floorplan - I believe some of those I-House closets must be a couple of sf larger (and that is consistent with my memory of my old room compared to my daughter’s). I think BJ might have higher ceilings which adds to the feeling of spaciousness. But other than that, it’s not clear that you get markedly different sized rooms between the two.
Love the idea of the GroupMe page! If they are creating doubles in I-House you KNOW there are a whole bunch of kids in the same boat. Currently, I-House has five residential houses so guessing 450 - 500 residents total this incoming year? That’s a bigger size than BJ or Snitch. Hey, maybe I-House can break the stranglehold that Snitch has on Scav.
Looking at those floor plans: they might be the mode, but they’re neither the median nor the mean. The “average single” for B-J would be on the smaller end for my house - with rooms on the 3rd and 4th floors considerably larger. After first year, anyone will have options that are considerably larger than the one shown.
Housing probably erred on the side of caution to avoid disappointing people, and that room is a decent approximation of what first-years will get (with the best rooms mostly gone), but doubles are a different beast.
So if there are converted singles that have become doubles, I expect they’re mostly larger singles - Places like the RA rooms or large singles we have on our 4th floor.
What exactly that means for a given house, I can’t say for sure.
Not if we beat them to it.
Now, a third-place finish for Snitchcock? That would be a thing of beauty.
@tennismom7: I was an EA admit, and got my third choice of dorm, and fourth choice overall (first choice was a single). My roommate is a waitlist admit (gap year) from the year prior. So we were at the top of the list. No idea why we didn’t end up at one of the dorms higher up on our list. There are plenty of kids on the facebook page who are grumbling. I was assigned to Granville-Grossman (South). Although my walk will be a little longer than if I had ended up in North, Max P or Snitch, overall I’m determined to make the best of it. I don’t want to belittle your son’s situation, and I’m hoping he will find happiness at I-House.
But just in case, I found this snippet on the housing website that may be of interest. It appears that intra-dorm transfers are allowed starting from week 3. Read more here:
@f77a9b82 roommates are assigned based on position of roommate that deposits last (which would be you) so it doesn’t matter that your roommate was a gap year admit
depending on when you deposited you could have been much farther down the list than expecting. when a few hundred kids deposit immediately because they ED’d waiting even a day or a week could put you pretty far down the list.
because there are so few dorms and the dorms are very similar these days almost has the same list of preferences because people just have less variables to make the decision from. i guarantee you can divide almost all of the first years into two groups: one where that put North, Max, and South, and one that put BJ, Snitchcock, and South (South is very neutral).
net result: deposit date matters a ton, way more than it used to and any deposit-date related advice from more than a year ago is outdated
intradorm transfers are difficult, especially now since space is so tight. priority is given for people who MUST move for one reason or another. moving because you got a dorm you didn’t want is practically unheard of; almost everyone finds out they actually were overreacting and they like it when they get here.
if you request a dorm transfer the most likely outcome is you’ll end up having to start over socially and in somewhere totally random based on what room happened to be open.
p.s. south is closer to the quad than north. don’t believe me? measure it in google maps. most of your classes will be on the south side of the quad so south is extra-closer. and south is also the closest to a dining hall, measuring door to door. @ me next time for more first year mythbusting.
@HydeSnark you would only be down this list as far as the second roommates deposit if you requested that person as a roommate. If that is the case, and @f77a9b82 waited on the deposit (as they could have waited until way after ED2 since they were an EA admit), they basically screwed over the gap year admit unfortunately.
@hydesnark@cu123: You’re right. I did deposit later. I thought that the deposit date of my roommate would have been given preference, but I got it mixed up.
By the way, I did a google maps distance calculator from each dorm to the Quad (Levi Hall as reference point):
South to Levi: 1992 feet
North to Levi: 2484 feet
IHouse to Levi: 3157 feet
Stony Island to Levi: 4463 feet
Reading about it on the webpage, I-House seems like it hosts a lot of events. Anyone have insight on whether this interferes with the students’ use of the first-floor lounge or other amenities?
Disclaimer: I am stating this as a personal preference and of course it reflects my personal belief and I make no claim that this is the objective environment.
I am a bit nervous crossing the Midway at least twice a day. I am much more comfortable with walking through Hull Gate to Main Quad from the North or Max P than walking across Midway from RGG/BJ to Eckhart or Ryerson. I would take the extra 1,000 feet per day for Max P and North over RGG and BJ. If my kid someday is accepted by UChicago, I would advise her to stay in North or Max P (she likes the North architecture anyway ).
But the future of College housing is south of 60th Street. When Woodlawn Residential Commons is done, over half of undergrad dorm rooms will be south of Midway. So UCPD may have to put blue shirt security guards on every street corner along 60th Street like they are doing now on 59th Street.
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