Wondering if anyone had any input on the best dorms for a first year at Hamilton. I’ve seen some threads but most of them are pretty brief and from a while ago.
I’m mostly STEM based which would suggest a light side dorm I’ve heard, but I really don’t mind a walk – the campus is pretty small. I really want to ensure that I meet as many people as I can freshman year and really max out my social scene, however I also don’t want too disgusting of a dorm.
Dunham seems to be the most social, but also the nastiest. I’m wondering how “nasty” it is and how social it is compared to other dorms, especially dorms like South. I don’t mind how many people are in my dorm, as long as we all have space of course. Another thing that I’m looking at is how the bathrooms are arranged. I’m not a huge fan of the “stall” style bathrooms, and I’d like to have a little privacy, and of course I’m expecting a shared bathroom.
The short answer is it doesn’t really matter: you’re going to be assigned first-year housing by Hamilton. If you have a documented accessibility issue or you request and are given one of the specialties (like Wilderness and Outdoor Living), that will limit the options, but otherwise you don’t have any control over this.
(All the current freshman housing is pretty similar and just fine.)
My son was in Dunham his first year, and in South his second year. He’ll be over on the dark side next year. Dunham is nowhere near as gross as we were led to believe it would be. My kid was in a two-room quad, on a floor with split doubles and quads. Rooms were totally fine, and the bathrooms were in decent shape. Proximity to the dining hall was greatly appreciated, and the common spaces on the bottom floor were clean and spacious. The biggest issue with Dunham was that the rooms run hot in Winter, and it can take some time to figure out how to control that.
Hamilton’s campus is among the most spatially luxuriant anywhere. The walk from the science center to the farthest first-year residence hall covers four (flat) fifths of a mile. I’d pay extra for a walk such as this, but people vary.