justawallet

S accepted ED 2012. Would appreciate the pros and cons of various residence options - location, amenities, theme, vibe. Differences of opinion welcome!

withinamile

In terms of residence options, your S will only have 4 options when choosing a residence hall. Traditional, First-Year, Program, or Co-op.

Most of the dorms on campus are traditional dorms, and many of those dorms also house the program houses. So even if you choose traditional, students often get placed in the same dorm that a program house is in.

There are two first-year dorms - Dascomb and Barrows. There's no option to choose either one.

Then there are 4 different live-in co-op options - Harkness, Keep, Tank and Old B. This is the only time you get to rank/choose your residence choice.

Hope that helps somewhat. I personally stayed clear from the first-year dorms and went with the co-ops.

BassDad

I've seen the inside of Harkness, Keep and Tank in mid-semester form. If cleanliness of the common spaces is important to you, you might want to stay away from the co-ops. If you can tolerate disorder, the sense of community in the co-ops appears to be excellent. In fact, my daughter had an assignment in one of the nicest rooms on campus - the room at the top of the turret in Talcott with half a dozen huge windows overlooking practically the whole campus, but she turned it down for a cramped room in a co-op with one small window looking at a parking lot because she liked the group of people who were going to be living there. (You can see the outside of the room I mean at Oberlin College Housing and Dining and yes, that whole space is for just two people.)

Harkness is said to be to Oberlin as Oberlin is to the rest of the world, so you may want to make some discrete inquiries of current and/or former residents before deciding on it in particular.

Fanatic517

Freshman dorm (I live in Barrows this year) pros: you're all first years, you make instant friends, you live very close with most of your friends, freshmen from the traditional dorms usually come to your dorm to hang out, you have a lot of great stories to tell, close to all of the important stuff (King, Stevie, library, etc)

cons: not exactly the nicest dorms, a lot of drama, drunk upperclassmen occasionally wander through and break things

TheOneCurlyFry

First off, congratulations!

It depends on the kind of person your son is - I personally would not have enjoyed the first-year dorms. I chose quiet floor (quiet floor and substance free housing are also options you can choose) and I'm very happy with it. I've never really been to the first-year dorms, though - most of my friends live elsewhere. You do make instant friends in them, although it's not at all difficult to meet people if you don't live there. I've found that because I don't have an instant community in my dorm, I have friends from all over campus, and I have several different groups of people I can hang out with, and I find this refreshing - I'm not stuck with the same group of people all the time.

Most dorms are close to all the important places, Oberlin is a pretty small campus.

noir.stork

Congrats!

I lived in Dascomb my first year and switched out. I liked the community, but I needed more space. Changing to a divided-double (as opposed to Dascomb's open doubles) was simple, and I kept my friends. I think that first year dorming is important because it's so social, but it's nice to take a breather from it. I'd try to have another group of friends who aren't in the dorm. Is your son a really really social person, or does he like to have his own space?

Themes: Disorder. Cheer. Company. Booze. Late-night fun.

Location: Close to class/food, but like CurlyFry pointed out, it's a small campus.

Pros: Community instantly.
Cons: Community constantly.

estargrl88

I really like the way noir.stork classified first year dorms' pros and cons! I enjoyed living in a first year dorm because it helped me meet people quickly, though in hindsight because there are so many people there you sort of accept lots of people as friends who you may later find you're actually not so compatible with (happened to me). But it's nice to have that network and the diversity of people (in many ways, including from wild partiers to people who abstain from all that). As a more introverted person, it was good for me to have that "instant" community, but to my surprise I actually didn't have a problem having my own space at times.