<p>I agree. This was an important consideration. At D’s, virtually everyone lives on campus all 4 years and the dorms have freshman-to-senior. At S’s, while you can move off campus, there’s no reason to, esp now that he has a Greek house to live in (the Greek houses are on campus). I absolutely do not get the appeal of an off campus apartment at all, and would strongly discourage my kids from doing that unless there was an absolutely compelling reason. I can’t think of one, to be honest. You have the rest of your life to be responsible for your own cleaning, food preparation, etc.</p>
<p>When I was at Vassar in the mid 80’s all freshmen lived in dorms mixed together with upperclasspeople. I don’t remember any residential 3 year colleges at all, though some upperclassmen lived in houses.</p>
<p>Is that new or did I miss a big thing, I wonder?</p>
<p>Edited to add…in looking at Vassar’s web site i guess they considered what I called my dorm to be a house (I was in Main). I sure wouldn’t call that a residential college in the terms I think of…we all ate in the same dining hall, for instance, not one in our “college” or “house”.</p>
<p>Vassar is small enough that it doesn’t really need to subdivide itself into colleges. Part of the idea of the residential college is to create a smaller community within the larger university for people to get to know each other.</p>
<p>While not a residential college at all, the School of Computer Science within Carnegie Mellon seemed to serve very much this function. They had a required freshman course to get to know Pittsburgh. They had lounge spaces with lots of computers for kids to hang out in and they really seemed to develop a sense of community. A very nerdy community, but for my older son it was really perfect.</p>
<p>I would say Caltech’s HOVSES and HOUSES (Caltech joke) are also somewhat like residential colleges, though they also seem a lot like co-ed fraternities.</p>
<p>A few reasons which may not appeal to you, or may vary in applicability at different colleges:</p>
<p>a. Some students prefer the relative quietness of an off-campus apartment (or a school-operated apartment, if available) versus a typical college dorm.
b. Some students do not like gang bathrooms (even single-gender) in college dorms.
c. Some students find the often-mandatory-with-dorm-contract meal plan unsuitable for them due to medical, religious, or other reasons.
d. There may be other student-specific reasons why the dorms are unsuitable or undesirable for a given student.
e. Off campus housing may be less expensive at some colleges.
f. Off campus housing may include alternative group living situations like cooperative houses, fraternities, sororities, non-school-run dorms, etc. as well as apartments.
g. Students from nearby may commute from where they are already living to save money. This is likely the most common situation at community colleges and less selective state universities that cater mainly to local students.</p>
<p>I get the reasons in the abstract, ucb. I’m saying for my kids’ situations, I don’t currently see compelling reasons and I would need a lot of convincing.</p>
<p>DD moved off campus her sophomore year at Rice and never went back even though many of her friends did. As a VP major, the dorms were too noisy and germy. She had to have her sleep and clean space or she got sick. Her best friend who became her apartment mate had special dietary needs. She lived with music majors in apartments for 3 years, but at Rice, once a member of the residential college, that is your home and identity forever. It is not just the dorm, it is the governance, social, and activity center for the students. She had many friends still there, she could be part of the student governance for the residential college, she played for their intramural teams. And during the hurricane, they took their off campus students back on campus, housed and fed them in their residential college until off campus power was restored. </p>
<p>I think this distinguishes Rice’s residential college system from others somewhat. It IS the central focus on campus, there are no other dorms or Greek system. She considers herself an alumni of her residential college first, Rice second. When she goes back to visit for alumni events, she goes to the residential college.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t consider Vassar’s housing a res college per se, though there are similarities. Faculty do live in the dorms and there are members of all 4 classes in each dorm. But, you are free to change dorms from year to year as opposed to being assigned/affiliated with one dorm all 4 years, and many upperclassmen now live in the Town Houses and Terrace Apartments one the edge of campus/across the street.</p>
<p>**eta- Vassar closed the individual dorm dining rooms in the 70’s . It is a shame. They were great.</p>
<p>Rice is a traditional Res college system, like Yale. One typically asks grad of each school which college they lived in.</p>
<p>The Collegiate Way is an organization that tracks and encourages the development of residential colleges. They also maintain a great website with a comprehensive list of residential colleges.</p>
<p>^^Took a quick look at the collegiateway website; thanks for posting the info, siliconvalleymom. Very surprised not the see University of Chicago on the list. I wonder why/how it doesn’t meet the definition of a residential college…</p>
<p>jym that would have been cool, to have individual dining rooms. I did actually eat in Main a fair bit but that’s because I often overslept and missed main dining hall breakfast and Main had a (pay cash) snack bar/grill right downstairs ;)</p>
<p>I know that a prof family lived there but honestly I never saw or spoke to them. Never saw an RA either, we did pretty much what we wanted, not sure if that has changed.</p>
<p>OHmom-
I think you said you were there in the 80s? By then you had the college center attached to Main, which wasnt there in the 70’s. There was a snack shop in Main (the retreat), but as construction began it got moved to the Aula. The days of stumbling down to breakfast in your bathrobe and slippers with the NY Times are gone. Good times (well, maybe thats not the right choice of words, but you get my drift). Also, you’d know, for example, which dorms served the best steak (Davison) and the dinner lines were down the hall on steak night. </p>
<p>The faculty members in the dorms were probably a more active part of student life when the dining rooms were in the dorms, and when people went to tea at 4 (to play bridge, usually) and demitasse on Sundays. Ahh, the good ol’ days…</p>
<p>OK, back to your regularly scheduled discussion of Res colleges.</p>
<p>Smith has a residential college system. Students live in houses, not dorms, and all grades are mixed together. Students become fiercely attached to their house, frequently stay there all four years, and make life long friendships there. Years after graduation, one of the first questions Smithies ask each other is not what year were you or what was your major, but what house were you in?</p>
<p>As a partnership between University Housing and the College of Letters and Science, Chadbourne Residential College (CRC) is a vibrant community of students, staff, and faculty committed to interdisciplinary learning and civic engagement for the purpose of developing responsible, invested citizens in our local and global communities.</p>
<p>I think every school we visited has some kind of residential college option on either a small scale or campus wide. I guess it depends on how one defines “residential college” because I am seeing it used several ways here.</p>
<p>It does seem that there are alot of different ideas about what constitutes a residential college. My impression of collegiate way is part of their agenda is promoting the idea of the professor as playing a more central role in the overall life of the student-therefore they would define residential colleges as ones with professors in residence. When we toured Yale the guide did mention that the professor in residence was valuable to her in getting her out of an introductory Philosophy class that she was having trouble with.</p>
<p>The resident faculty was invaluable when we were dealing with my s’s illness/hospitalization just before starting freshman year and also when he had his broken leg. He went to a school with a res college system. </p>
<p>That said, many students were also pretty close with the faculty in residence in our dorms in college, but it wasnt considered a “residential college system” per se. Guess there is some flexibility in the model.</p>