<p>I think dorms are important. My S2 did not want to live in a dorm with communal bathrooms. He specifically wanted suite style…and he eliminated one college that only had singles, double and triples with communal bathrooms unless you lived in a frat. It was that important to him. The same college had tiny rooms and no room to store bikes inside during the winter. Kids just chained expensive (and not so expensive) bikes outside in the snow. My son was horrified by this particular college. He made it through the communal dorm part of the tour, but dropped out and we left when informed that kids left their bikes outside all winer. You don’t have to see every dorm on campus, but if you have a kiddo with a marked preference about something related to living style it makes a difference.</p>
<p>D was the opposite. She was really critical of labs, classrooms and areas to congregate in public spaces (library, student union, academic buildings, general lounges, nightspots, workout areas, etc) She’s a kid who doesn’t spend that much time in her room and figures the comfortable public spaces and science building are where she’ll be a lot. She ended up choosing a school that has been very intentional in their remodeling and building process to promote community space.</p>
<p>If your kiddo must see the dorm ROOMS…then go in the summer when most are empty. We found that college tours in the summer DID include a stroll down a corrider of a dorm…where no one was living. </p>
<p>My kids actually saw dorm rooms but that was “preprivacy” guidelines. I want to go on the record of saying…NEITHER of them chose the college with the nicest dorm rooms.</p>
<p>My third son is that way about couses and facilities in his major. He recently went on an academic visit and second visit to what I thought would be his first choice college and he was very disappointed in the department facilities, software, labs etc. in his intended major. It has really clouded his opinion of a college that he thought was going to be #1. Everything else is great, but this is a big hurdle for him. 3 could sleep in a room with 20 kids and not be bothered but the academic setting is very important to him. Neither kid is right or wrong…they all need to be somewhere that they can grow and excel.</p>
<p>The privacy issue is really important. During busy season, some colleges are running many tours a day, or tours split up into many groups. From either side, you really don’t want random adults, high schoolers, and little siblings wandering through the living areas of 20 year-olds, even if it’s only a couple of times a day.</p>
<p>Then there’s the security issue, since campus tours aren’t the most tightly controlled thing around. If there were a regular practice of campus tours going in the dorms, how hard do you think it would be for Joe Pervert to get in?</p>
<p>I agree that it would be nice to see the dorms, but even if you see a little it’s prototypical misleading information: vivid, memorable, but anecdotal and not really reliable.</p>
<p>When I toured NYU years ago, they had a Potemkin dorm room set up on a floor undergoing rehabilitation, so no one was actually living there at the time. The room looked like a display ad for Bed, Bath & Beyond. The thing that impressed me most – and I think the other parents on the tour, too – was the incredibly strong “baked-in” smell that permeated the room even though no one had been living in it for almost a year. It really took me back to college days. I don’t think the kids even recognized it – none of them had lived anywhere yet where you could possibly smoke enough weed inside to produce that smell.</p>
<p>So, I appreciated the effort, but all the fake dorm room tour at NYU told me was that marijuana remained a big part of students’ lives in Greenwich Village. Maybe that’s why they don’t do dorm rooms at NYU anymore. (The rest of our NYU tour was great, however. Great guide, great locations. I was ready to sign up when it ended.)</p>
<p>And the bathroom issue . . . Kids need to learn that, like most other human beings, they are more than capable of adapting to unfamiliar environments, including communal bathrooms. Apart from kids with some sort of diagnosed condition involving pathological rigidity, everyone else should be forbidden to make college choices based on bathroom configuration.</p>
<p>My tour guide D, whose tours do not include dorm rooms, suggest that parents who absolutely want to see one just go up to the dorms and ask a student who is on their way I n if they can see their room. Explain the situation nicely, and most students are happy to let you take a look!
However her university also has a 3-d on line look at the dorm rooms…they are lucky she can now say, that except for single rooms, 100 % of the dorms have been built or remodeled in the last 5 years.</p>
<p>^LOL. I know lots of kids want suites for private bathrooms. But I like bathrooms on the hall - someone else cleans them and you get out and meet other people on the hall. My oldest wouldn’t even go on most dorm tours, he said they all looked the same. He ended up in a dorm room that IMO was way, way nicer than any on the tour, but it was a 10 minute walk off campus. He liked it so much he kept the room for two years. </p>
<p>We saw dorms at Caltech (where I would argue they are a very important part of the culture), RPI (super ugly), Brandeis (even uglier), Tufts (pretty bad), Carnegie Mellon (newest building, A/C but tiny rooms), Vassar (downstairs only, so reminded me of Radcliffe and my boarding school). Chicago, and American no dorms on the tour but sons did an overnight. Stanford, only saw the dining hall of a dorm. Georgetown, Bard saw nothing but outsides of dorms.</p>
<p>We usually saw classroom or lecture hall, often saw science labs, always saw student center and cafeteria.</p>
<p>I don’t actually mind if you can only see dorms on line, but my pet peeve is the floor plans are often inaccurate. Son’s first room at Tufts turned out to be bigger and better designed than what was on the plan! His second one is just awful - it’s a newer building and the architect should be ashamed. My son can’t sit up in bed without hitting his head on the ceiling.</p>
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<p>Just don’t be offended if the student says NO. At some colleges…students are TOLD not to take strangers of any sort into the dorms under any circumstances…no matter how much they beg.</p>
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This is really very important. He’s going there for an education, not a sleepover, so he should feel like it’s the best place to get that education. Particularly for STEM majors, the facilities are critical.</p>
<p>My ds toured UW/Madison and was very disappointed he did not get to see a dorm room. A new Frosh. Dorm is under construction and that is the reason they gave for NOT showing any dorm rooms, wouldnt be representative anyway. I think they should plan on showing a room, period. $40k a year and you cant see a room? Give me a break.</p>
<p>We just know going into tours that freshman dorm rooms are pretty crappy no matter where you go so it doesn’t really matter if we see them or not :D.</p>
<p>Ironically the only tour we took that didn’t show us a dorm room was Occidental - the college D ended up choosing. They did take us into the common lounge of one of the dorms. Since most of the other tours we took were in the summer, the dorm rooms we did see were sort of like ‘model’ rooms - meaning no one lived in them. I think the reason we didn’t see an Oxy dorm room is because school was in session and they probably couldn’t get anyone to agree to show their dorm room.</p>
<p>At Oxy they showed us the library, the science building, the marketplace (dining hall), one of the dorms (but no room) and mostly just pointed out different buildings.
Pomona was pretty much the same except they showed us a empty dorm room. At Scripps they showed us the coffee house (very cool!), the art buildings, a library that was very old and quite beautiful and the most beautiful dorm I personally have ever seen. </p>
<p>Having toured many colleges now all the different libraries, non-descript buildings, common dining areas and dorm common rooms have sort of run together in my mind. </p>
<p>While Oxy dorms did nothing for me I was ready to move into Scripps myself. D however nixed the all-girl college very quickly and really when all was said and done ended up not really caring about the dorms that much. Teens are pretty adaptable and I think it’s true that if they see everyone surviving it they figure they will too. </p>
<p>What I enjoy most about college tours are the Q&A session either before or after and if I can I l always try to quiz the tour guide (usually an older student) about their personal college experience. I’m always interested why someone picked the college they did, how they like it and also what else they applied to. </p>
<p>The problem with college tours for me at least in my D’s case is that she made some very definite decisions about her choices based on the tours. She basically ruled out all the Claremonts after visiting them and I’m still not 100% sure why. I guess she just didn’t get the ‘vibe’ she was looking for.</p>
<p>SteveMA…sorry to disagree with you…but my daughter’s freshman dorm (and they were most all the same) was absolutely LOVELY…complete with lofted beds, AC and walk in closet. It was located in a fabulous central location. YMMV by school.</p>
<p>Well, to be fair, sometimes the freshman dorms are spanking new and fabulous and sophomore housing is the pits. Depends on the school. </p>
<p>As for what to see on the tour, it depends on what the school has the is worth showing off. If the science center is antiquated, tour guides would be wise not to show it (and prospective science majors would do well to ask about the science facilities). Of course, if all the tour guide talks about are the fabulous sports facilities and the winning football team, that tells you something right there; how you and your kid feel about it will obviously vary.</p>
<p>Thumper–that is why we go into the tours thinking that all freshman dorms are crappy, if they end up at that school and the dorms end up being nice, bonus. If they are crappy like we think, then it isn’t a factor in the overall decision. We have been on 30+ tours over the years, various sports camps at various colleges, etc. and have yet to come across any freshman dorm that I would consider LOVELY. Upperclassmen, sure, some of those are amazing, but not for freshmen.</p>
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<p>This phenomenon is something I’ve heard is becoming more and more common. The freshman are given the nicer dorms, while the sophomores get the bottom of the barrel.</p>
<p>Most of the small LACs we toured showed us a dorm room. I felt a little suspicious if they didn’t. Classrooms–my son didn’t like them as much if there were rows of seats with a prof in front. He preferred discussion circles. One class he attended, the students didn’t say a thing; just took notes. Off the list. We always ate on campus and spent time in the library.</p>
<p>We went on a couple of tours where the guide promised that “this would be the worst room you could get” - it was typically small and undistinguished. Then they would talk about the other themed dorms etc.</p>
<p>One of my favorite tours was at Bennington during the summer. There was no one on campus but the tour guide took us to a classroom and had us sit down while he explained the school’s teaching philosophy, to a dorm and we sat in the lounge while he explained the various choices, to the student center/dining hall etc. I was ready to sign up then and there but unfortunately the student in question was not as thrilled…</p>
<p>Thumper-
totally agree on students being extra careful on who they let into the dorms. Good judgment should always prevail!</p>
<p>If the student or parents have concerns about post graduation job or graduate school placement, going to the career center and asking about what employers come to recruit students in the prospective major and what the placement rates of recent graduates in the prospective major would be something to do, at least if the information is not publicly available on the web site.</p>
<p>If graduate school in an academic subject is under consideration, a stop at the department of the prospective major to ask about graduate school preparation and placement may be in order.</p>
<p>If professional school (e.g. law, medicine) is under consideration, a stop at wherever the pre-professional-school advising office to ask about advising resources and placement rates may be in order.</p>