"Nap pods and gaming arcades. Walk-in closets and private bathrooms. Rooftop pools and maid service.
With modern campuses caught up in what is popularly known as the amenities arms race, it is hard to blame incoming freshmen for expecting cushy suites and flat-screen TVs.
But most colleges have a residence hall or two that you’ll never see on the campus tour: the ones that look suspiciously like the fluorescent-lit dorms of yore." …
Base on our college visit experiences this is so true!
D2 will be at Cornell this fall and is super happy she didn’t get in the Low Rises. Although if she did, I’m sure she would be fine and make the best of it!
My daughter ended up in the oldest, most run down and farthest from everything dorm at her college. She loved it, and chose to live there again sophomore year. She’s abroad this year, but is seriously considering the same dorm her senior year. When I was in college, I preferred the built in the 1890s dorm to the 1968 dorm with renovated bathrooms that I lived in my sophomore year. I wouldn’t want to put up with vermin, but sometimes the old is more charming than the relatively new.
I live in a college town and have been helping students (mostly international) to move in in the past 16 years. I witness the improvement of dorms over time. There were over a century old girl dorm rooms without air conditioning turned into one of the most popular dorms for sophomore. The 20-30 year old apartment like dorm building that was popular 15 years ago became something everyone try to avoid. During this 15 years transition, the school became more prestigious and the tuition went up over 5 times.
When my daughter toured the university she ultimately enrolled in, she was shown the very worst dorm. It was a pleasant surprise when she got a much nicer building and room.
Touring state universities this summer with a family friend, I noticed schools tended to show very typical but decidedly un-fancy rooms, to avoid disappointment when students move in. Makes sense to me. I’d much prefer to adjust expectations up, rather than down, once dorm assignments are made.
@katliamom That was our experience too. We toured the same dorm building twice that it is the dorm most freshmen trying to avoid these days. Most of the other dorms are in better location, recently renovated, and have air conditioning but none for this one.
The WashU dorm tour was jaw dropping for sure. Beautiful, and temperpedic mattresses in all rooms. Impressive bathrooms, too! In the heat of August and September, there are misters in the dorm village that students walk through to cool off. All of our other tours were a disappointment compared to this!!!
My son got to see the new dorms at his school. But, all the freshmen lived in one of the older dorms. We discovered one thing. He has an allergy to mold. Fortunately, this will not be an issue this fall. He is moving into his fraternity house, which is relatively new.
^^
A lot of that depends on geography, don’t you think?
I survived my entire childhood without AC in my Long Island bedroom. Nope, not “torture” and not “dangerous.” The high school I work at doesn’t have AC in the classrooms, and neither do the schools my kids attend.
Dorms get too much attention by prospective students and their parents. They live in them for nine months of their four year (hopefully only four) undergrad experience. Also, when they are in a “bad” dorm, they are usually in it with all freshmen and get that “all in it together” attitude. It just gets a lot of prospective student attention because it is their first home away from their parent’s.
But, hopefully students and parents don’t put this worry above finances, quality of teachers, student-teacher ratio, program quality, outplacement, etc.
Often, the oldest dorms have the best location. My son lived in old dorms, and he could literally wake up 5 minutes before he had class across the street.
My daughter is about to move into a dorm that looks worse than the one I lived in in 1978-1980. No air conditioning, a closet that has only a rail for hangers but no shelves, a small, small dresser, beds with no risers permitted. The only good thing is she’ll be on the 6th floor, and maybe she’ll get a breeze …
We toured a dorm at a large state uni that offers a full ride to National Merit Finalists. It was the building with the honors wing, so – apart from this one being on the standard tour – we were very interested. The halls were so narrow it was like walking through a U-Boat. The experience was all my kid needed to rule that school out.
When we toured Macalester, we were stunned at how bad they were—I mean, this is the one they’re showing off??
Also, tour guides could be coached better on handling the A/C question. Yeah, you might only feel like you need A/C the first and last weeks of the school year, but if you’re from Southern California and you know the prospect who just asked you the question is from Alaska, you might want to toss off that prepackaged line a bit less blithely, you know?
For all the talk about luxury dorms, I have never seen any dorm on any tour, anywhere, that had anything remotely fancy or luxurious. Some were more updated than others, but nothing to write home about. Never seen any climbing walls or lazy rivers or any of that stuff too. I think some of this is “kids these days have it so soft.”