<p>From personal experience, why were the dorms you (current Berk students) lived in awesome or really sucky?</p>
<p>Foothill is absolute crap. It’s on Northside, which is very quiet (good for studying). It’s also right across the street from all the Engineering buildings, so that might be a plus. Other than that, the Foothill DC food is the worst on campus (yes - even worse than DC3); the rooms are old and showing visible signs of wear and tear; if you stuck on a high floor, you have to take lots of stairs - no elevators; walking up and down campus several times a day to return home just gets plain annoying. If anything, I’d say the food is by far the biggest turn-off. I hate Foothill, and I’m really glad I’ll be living on southside next year.</p>
<p>Depends on what you mean by awesome and really sucky…</p>
<p>Unit 1: good place, nice bathrooms, fun environment. one building is substance free. students eat at crossroads. </p>
<p>Unit 2: same as unit 1 minus the substance free building. </p>
<p>Unit 3: same as 2 but way more parties. has its own cafeteria (DC3) </p>
<p>Bowles: crappy bathrooms and rooms. all male. all freshman. no parties. uses foothill DC. </p>
<p>Stern: one of the newest dorms. all female. few parties. foothill DC. </p>
<p>Foothill hillside: geeky engineering types live here. known for having antisocial students. good rooms and bathrooms. WISE program is here. </p>
<p>Foothill la Loma: not as antisocial as hillside, but still pretty up there. houses GBLT.</p>
<p>I didn’t like my time at foothill either, even though it was suppose to be the best.</p>
<p>The good things about foothill is that it is on the nice side of campus (south side is full of crime and very ghetto). Its also pretty quiet as long as your room isn’t next to the street. Its also GREAT exercise walking to Foothill coming from class. I was like 30 lbs overweight when I went to Berkeley but I lost all of it just by chugging it to and from foothill (I didn’t know the bus pass existed then). The food is pretty bad but all places are bad. The dorms are “isolated” from each other (at least 3 years ago when I was there) so it was bad for socializing (I’m betting Units 1 and 2 allow open access). </p>
<p>I only know about foothill, but while greatestyen and tastyb33f are right, there’s also the things I pointed out.</p>
<p>Um no, the units do not have open access. Foothill does. Bit of a mixup there. </p>
<p>In defense of Foothill, where I live: yeah, it’s pretty boring if you’re the party type. Many people are known to shut their doors and only come out to eat…every single day of the year. But the food is really not that bad. (Has gotten better over the last couple of years.) And if you have real issues with it you can always just go to Crossroads and come back on the bus. The whole process should take no more than an hour.</p>
<p><a href=“http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~guide/Dorms[/url]”>http://tbp.berkeley.edu/~guide/Dorms</a></p>
<p>How much has bowles changed since they converted it to freshman?</p>
<p>UNIT 3!!!
bear market, close to campus, DC3 (although it SUCKS so i go to clark kerr DC on weekends…hahaha)
it’s kinda old, compared to unit 1/2
o yeah…unit 1/2 has better facilities like better music room, exercise room, bigger computing center…i’m so jealous…haha
but i still love unit 3</p>
<p>Clark Kerr is supposed to be the nicest, but it’s also very far from campus.</p>
<p>You guys really do hate the food in general. I think that the food is not so bad. Students everwhere get tired of their dorm food, even places with really good food such as UCLA. Few places can compete with Berkeley’s off campus places, although most are at least a minute walk from the dorms. Keep in mind that if you think what we eat is bad, you should feel quite sorry for alums from before 2003 or so. </p>
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<p>No elevators? My friend seems to think that there are a few, and he lives there. Does La Loma have them and Hillside not, or something?</p>
<p>Anyway, what’s as important as location is type of room. Living in a mini-suite is different than the other unit buildings, for various reasons including the floor bathroom, and living in a large Clark Kerr suite is different than living in a tiny cramped room at CKC, for instance. Keep this stuff in mind as well.</p>
<p>I can live in a shoddy room. That’s not the issue- my main priority is the people/social life. I don’t “party” that much, but I love to socialize.</p>
<p>I would suggest that the old-style unit buildings would be the best for that. Read everything you can on the housing website.</p>
<p>haha there’s no such thing as “a tiny cramped room at CKC.”
I guess I’ll represent the clark kerr side as that has been left out a bit. yes it’s a walk, but it’s really not that much farther than unit 2 (5-10 minutes depending on how fast you walk), plus bus is always an option. in terms of food - dinner can really vary (it was more often good earlier on in the year) while lunch is really good (because noone’s there at that time). the rooms are pretty spacious - the social aspect depends on each floor, each building. another positive: i think most people would agree that the campus is pretty nice looking. another negative: things tend to break down here.</p>
<p>What are the big differences between the three units that differentiates each one?</p>
<p>There are no differences, really…Units 1 and 3 are both one block off campus; Unit 2 is 3 blocks off campus. Units 1 and 2 share the Crossroads DC that’s in the block between them; Unit 3 has its own DC. Units 1 and 2 have stuff like workout rooms, some quiet study rooms, etc, but Unit 3 has that too, I think…and all the units have their own Residential Computing center. There’s really no difference.</p>
<p>nbanyk, I’ve seen very spacious clark kerr rooms, but I’ve seen a few cramped ones when walking through it. <em>shrug</em> Perhaps they are few and far between.</p>
<p>The units are in physically different places. They have a few blocks between them. Besides that there are a few, but generally small, differences. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/CDEF345.html[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/CDEF345.html</a></p>
<p>“Unit 4” is Foothill, Bowles, Stern.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/ABCD567.html[/url]”>http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/ABCD567.html</a></p>
<p>How much housing choice do freshmen have? What about Regents’ Scholars?</p>
<p>Freshmen can choose Units 1, 2, 3 doubles or triples; Stern (women only), Bowles (men only), Foothill double or triple in a suite (all of Foothill is suites), or arrange your own housing situation. I highly recommend living in a dorm at least the first year - it helps out a lot in terms of meeting people and giving you a leg up on the social situation.</p>
<p>Regents’ Scholars have the same choices, I believe, except they’re guaranteed 4 years of campus housing.</p>
<p>hey man, DC3 is by farrr the most superior campus restaurant! we have “kenny the omelette guy,” “sushi sundays,” great late night pizza, hotwings, and cheesy stick orders, and much much more!</p>
<p>DC3 > all other DCs</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Many freshmen get shafted in their housing assignments. In other words, they don’t get any of their five choices. A lot of us got cramped unit triples, not to mention all of us that were condemned to Bowles or Stern.</p>