@cannonmom
I live in Hullabaloo and it’s sort of half and half. Most engineers live in Mosher or somewhere on southside, but from what I can tell there isn’t any huge advantage/disadvantage to living in Hullabaloo vs Mosher. Half of my classes are on southside and half are on northside. Zachry is going to be far no matter where you live since it is off in its own corner. The northside classes will be closer to northside dorms, and the southside classes to southside dorms. Hullabaloo is pretty far off on its own too and isn’t going to be close to any classes, but the quality of it more than makes up for that, and the northside residence lot (lot 30) is directly beside it.
A more central dorm would be best if location is a huge concern, Hart is pretty central, Haas/McFadden/Lechner and the Commons dorms aren’t bad locations either.
One thing to note is that my southside friends who aren’t engineers all wanted to get northside. For some reason, these are the dorms everyone wants. Maybe its being near northgate, maybe its the proximity to Sbisa or that the only Chick-Fil-A on campus is a 20-minute walk from southside but only 5 minutes from northside.
The engineers, for the most part, wanted to be surrounded by other engineers in Mosher.
If you want to take a look at a map and see where you personally think the best dorm based off location will be, I can go ahead and list off buildings your son will likely have classes in:
-Chem and chemlab will be in HELD
-Engineering will be in ZACH
-My math class is in BSBE, my math lab is in BLOC, and my math recitation is in HEB
As far as friends go, I don’t talk to anyone from high school. I know a group of girls I went to school with are here, and I know they are all still friends, but I wasn’t really friends with them then and I’m not friends with them now. I know another guy from my high school is here, but he has made friends with others one way or another.
All of my friends come from Fish Camp, classes, and clubs. Fish Camp I feel is a good starting point, your son will have his DG or anyone else he just bonded with at camp to hang out with. My closest friend here I didn’t talk to at all at Fish Camp but we went to a continuity event after move-in, got a ride from the same counselor, and now we’re great friends.
Teamwork is encouraged in the engineering class, and maybe its luck that I sat at this random table with people I really click with or maybe all engineers just get along well together, but my teammates get along great, and most other tables I see around us are always having fun or talking and chatting about things other than the work at hand (when time allows). His lab partners in math and chemistry he’ll also chat with and spend time with, allowing for more friendships there. Clubs may be the easiest place to make friends since they’ll probably have something in common and if he’s comfortable striking up conversations with people then that makes it even easier.
A LOT of people are friends with their roommate and do a lot of activities with them, which is another avenue for making a friend.
@Eggscapgoats The difficulty of classes depends on the prof and your son’s background in the class.
-For example, if he makes a 5 on the AP calc test, he’ll probably think calculus is really easy. It really isn’t bad, and as long as he spaces out homework and doesn’t try to do all three assignments for the week the night they’re due it shouldn’t be bad.
-Chemlab is probably the worst of the classes. Even if you are confident in a chemistry lab, some labs just take all 3 hours to complete. Pre- and Post-labs are also time-consuming sometimes since they require flipping around in the lab manual or fighting with excel or just trying to figure out when you went over the material the question is asking. There are also two 40-question assignments we were given on top of the regular work the first four weeks of lab, and those were the actual worst and took forever to complete.
-Chemistry can be rough. I have the easier of the two teachers and the average for the last test was a 74. At least she curved it, but that is just an indication of how challenging it is. The homework isn’t bad though, I would just suggest not trying to do it all the night before it’s due.
-Math lab is sort of frustrating. Sometimes its easy and you finish in the class, sometimes matlab crashes every minute and you get nothing done even after working on it for an hour. It isnt really hard, just occasionally time-consuming.
-Engineering just depends. At the start, I was getting a lot of assignments that I had to work on outside of class because we couldn’t finish them in class. I had heard from a sophomore that he ended up getting out of engineering because the class was too time consuming and demanded more than other classes but is only worth 2 credit hours. That is how I felt at the start of the semester, and it would be even more frustrating that I would get assigned homework in class and it would be due later that day or the next, requiring me to prioritize it over homework I had already planned on doing that day. Now, however, my group and I are finishing assignments in class or before the class is even over, which is great. I’m starting to enjoy it more. So really, with this class, I think it can just depend. I also hear that different professors have the students do different things or focus more on certain points than others, so it’s possible the workload and difficult depend a lot on who the professor is.
If either of y’all need me to elaborate on anything, please let me know!