<p>Hi Kiefer,</p>
<p>The campus all over is generally very quiet. Most people study in some building or other. McCabe Library is the main library on campus. People who are majors in some sort of natural science often study in Cornell Library. People also study in the Science Center Coffee Bar and in Parrish Hall. The most quiet place is probably the upper level of Cornell Library, and it is very quiet, so I don’t think you’ll have a hard time studying there. Another quiet place is the basement of McCabe. For some reason, Cornell Library is quite noisy, except for the upper level. The rest of McCabe is pretty quiet, except for the main floor. I think you’ll find many places where you can study in quiet.</p>
<p>As for dorms, yes, they vary. If you get in, the College will ask you for dorm preferences, and you can say that you want it to be quiet. I live in Mertz, which is fine, but I usually don’t study much in my dorm anyway, just because sometimes my roommate talks on the phone, which is disruptive. Being able to sleep in quiet at night is usually a matter of having a roommate who will respect that need. If you request a dorm that’s relatively quiet, you should be fine.</p>
<p>For me, I dislike sleeping with any lights on, and it’s a problem because my roommate stays up really late and needs to use the computer and the light, so we kind of agreed that when one of us wants to sleep, the other should work outside the room.</p>
<p>Also, interesteddad forgot to mention one very loud sound: the extremely loud alarm that goes off in the borough of Swarthmore when there’s some emergency there. It is very noisy, and I just get cranky when it goes off at night when I’m trying to sleep. But you won’t hear it if you’re in a library, so there’s one more reason to study in a library and not in your dorm.</p>