<p>Yes, there is “swing space” inhabited by the students whose college is being renovated (currently, it’s Morse).
Most freshmen live on the Old Campus in dorms affiliated with their residential colleges. Thus, all the students in that dorm (or that part of the dorm) are in the same college. At two of the colleges, Silliman and Timothy Dwight, freshmen live in the college from the beginning. Integration into the college is pretty much immediate, though. It used to be that freshmen ate most of their meals at Commons, but it appears to me that many of them now eat a lot more of their meals in their colleges, particularly if they are near the Old Campus.</p>