<p>Hi everyone, I am an Italian student in the 12th grade and I am planing to study in the USA next year and stay in a university residence. </p>
<p>So, did the university residences close on holidays?</p>
<p>Every school handles this issue its own way. Some close down completely for the long vacation periods (winter break and spring break). Others keep one dorm open and limited cafeteria service for those whose homes are far away. You’ll need to do research for each school you’re interested in. Just as an example, by Googling “Harvard dorms vacation” I got this as the first result:
Googling “Penn State dorms vacation” produced this result:
</p>
<p>During Breaks and holidays, your roommate or your American friends will take you home. Some colleges also have “friendship families” or “local families” to give you a feel for American life during some weekends or holidays.</p>
<p>I certainly wouldn’t assume a foreign student would be able to impose on another family for the multiple weeks of winter break–that would require a very close friendship and a very accommodating family. You know what they say about houseguests and fish–they both start to stink after 3 days. Before coming to the US to study at a school where dorms close over long breaks, internationals with no family nearby should be sure that their budgets can cover traveling home or staying in a hotel in case those very welcoming families don’t materialize.</p>
<p>MommaJ, for Fall Break and Thanksgiving, which are the two main breaks where “hosting” is needed for internationals, yes the friendly welcoming American families “materialize”.
Thanksgiving in particular would be a very strange holiday not refuse to have a child’s friend over when they can’t go home.
The student may not always go to the same family of course (once the roommate’s, once a classmate’s, once a friend’s…) but in my experience there’s only been one case when the student had to spend Fall break on campus and even then he’d been invited by three people and just hadn’t accepted the offer, until he realized he’d be alone on campus and his pride wouldn’t let him ask his friends if the offer still stood. That’s the only case I encountered.</p>
<p>For Christmas Break it’s another kettle of fish, certainly, since the break is longer and more family-oriented, but even then there hasn’t been a situation where a student was just “left alone in a hotel” for Christmas. Perhaps we haven’t lived in the same area of the US, but where I’ve lived that would even have been unthinkable.</p>
<p>Spring break is often used for student pursuits or international student association college-sponsored trips.
I agree with your post #2 though, OP should check carefully what the accomodations are, what is open when, (if it costs extra), whether the college has school-sponsored Spring Break trips for International students (even school sponsored Fall break trips?), “host family”-type program, “take your roommate home” programs, international peer advisers, international support, etc, etc. That would probably factor into the choice of a school after OP has been admitted to several colleges.</p>
<p>You need to ask the schools. D’s school states that the residence halls close over Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break, and Easter and give a specific hour of they day they need to be out by and another that is the earliest they can return. However, D just received an e-mail alerting students to fill out a form identifying their need if they can’t leave campus over the holidays. So even a school that says their closed may have provisions for students with difficulty traveling. If there are accommodations, what they are, and what they cost are definitely going to differ by school.</p>