| Housing lottery
Does anyone want to share their impressions of various dorms? The CD was not as helpful for ranking the dorms as one might hope. Even stereotypes and sweeping generalizations would be helpful.
I'll start.... I have no personal knowledge of any of the dorms. But my son knows a bunch of people in Random, and I attended the housemaster's reception for parents during CPW. Some sweeping generalizations about Random would be that it has a reputation as a nerd dorm, in part because of a very high concentration of math majors. Many of them were involved in very high levels of math or science competitions in high school (like olympiads), or attended special math summer prgrams, and already know each other when they arrive. A number of freshmen choose Random every year specifically to be with other people they already know from those activities, which makes it kind of self-perpetuating. Obviously there are freshmen who choose Random for more general reasons, also (like rooms, location, etc.). But I know that at least some choose it for this particular reason (perhaps contributing to the "nerd" reputation). I am guessing that it is probably also a pretty straight crowd in terms of recreational substances.
There's no food service there, which could be either a plus or a minus. There are kitchens on the floor, and Randomites do their own cooking. There's a grocery store on the next block.
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