<p>I’ve been accepted into UVA as a scholar and was wondering how the housing situation works. I noticed that one of facets of the scholars program is that scholars live in a scholars dorm for their first year. Does this limit the roommate selection to only other scholars?</p>
<p>Echols and Rodman scholars live in the newest and nicest residence hall. I’m guessing that if you wanted a roommate who is not Echols or Rodman, you might be able to ask to live elsewhere. If you live elsewhere, residence halls are assigned randomly to first year students, but you can get a choice of roommate. I’m guessing that the residence hall is a benefit offered to Echols/Rodman, not a required place to live.</p>
<p>In addition to Echols and Rodman there are also College Science Scholars and College Arts Scholars, but normally these students are also Echols Scholars so sometimes they get lumped in together. Just worth noting, I think. You also don’t have a choice–you have to live in Scholars housing. It used to be avoidable back when the Scholars lived in Maupin, Webb, and Lile which weren’t nice dorms and you could file a medical need for a different dorm, but since the dorms are new and renovated you essentially have to live in them (there’s basically no reason that they will except to not live in them). Technically you can pick your roommate and if they are not a scholar then they will be placed into housing with you, but it is “strongly discouraged.” If you’re talking about the random pool of roommates then, yes, it will be limited to only Scholars.</p>
<p>I was wondering about this too. Do you have any input/knowledge on this, Dean J?</p>
<p>Echols scholars currently live in Watson-Webb and Balz-Dobie dorms. The dorms are new and very nice. (air-conditioned) There are not enough scholars to fill those dorms, so there are some non-echols and rodman kids living in those dorms.</p>
<p>I am also a scholar and have been told two different answers to this question. During the Days of the Lawn, some current Rodman Scholars told me that most likely I will be able to room with a non-rodman and still have the experience of living with the other scholars. However, others have been telling me that that is no longer possible. It would be nice if I could get an official answer.</p>
<p>In the past, if two students requested each other and one was a scholar, the non-scholar got pulled into the dorm with the scholars.</p>
<p>Ask the source about any possible changes: <a href=“https://www.facebook.com/UVAHousing[/url]”>https://www.facebook.com/UVAHousing</a></p>
<p>There was a guy in my suite who was not an Echols/Rodman scholar my first year that was there because he requested to room with another guy who was. So yeah, you can still room with anyone unless it changed in the past few years.</p>
<p>At the Echols Panel for Days on the Lawn last week (I was on the panel), it was indicated that this was changed for the incoming Class of 2017. From what Dean Davis said, it seems that you can no longer request a non-Echols as your roommate.</p>
<p>I feel like this segregation of Echols/Rodmans sort of contradicts the principles of meeting a diverse group of people. I’m still thrilled we get the new dorms tho lol but still it seems like we should be allowed to room with whoever we want, regardless of whether they are in the scholar program</p>
<p>There is plenty of diversity amongst the scholars, so that is not outside the desired ideals. Being in the dorms with other scholars is meant to provide another unique learning environment. Most see it as a key benefit.</p>
<p>Quick question if anyone knows. So, we just looked at the Housing application online. It doesn’t ask any “location” questions, just whether you prefer single, double, triple or residential housing, and says you’ll be randomly assigned to any one of the dorms in Alderman, McCormick and Gooch/Dillard (unless you specify a roommate). Will it know you’re a Rodman scholar and place you correctly in Balz-Dobie or Watson-Webb, or do you somehow need to specify this somewhere? Thanks.</p>
<p>“It” will “know” in the same way it knows when people are accepted to live in Brown College.</p>
<p>Yep. This is the beautiful of a “cradle to grave” student information system. Certain “tags” on a student’s file help it get handled properly. So, admission put that Rodman tag on the file and it’s visible to the housing folks once you matriculate.</p>
<p>For security reasons, there is a lot that can’t be seen as a file is accessed by different offices. For example, I can’t see any of the information that Student Financial Services put in there.</p>
<p>It does help the diversity somewhat that Echols and Rodmans get mixed together.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, normally the Rodmans get put on one floor of the building. So last year I lived on a floor without Rodman Scholars. My hall was pretty homogenous (we were all domestic students and Echols Schoalrs), but you interact with the entire floor since you share a common room. The other half of the floor had a lot of international students, which always made things interesting. That being said I still enjoyed my hall a lot and we had a diversity of personalities (and very strong opinions).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about the diversity amongst Echols Scholars. In my experience, it’s very similar to the distribution among UVa as a whole- lots of NoVa people, but then again it has a nice mix of religions/political beliefs/majors/ethnicities/etc. On my hall this year, we have 3 Rodmans, an international student, a hardcore Republican, a hardcore Democrat, somebody who worked at NASA, somebody who’s been doing research in labs since tenth grade, a harpist, a pianist, singers, a girl who knows judo, a Clint Eastwood aficionado, english majors, biochem majors, etc etc. </p>
<p>And as you can see from the above, I live with some really cool people! There are some really awesome people with awesome skills everywhere at UVa (I could go on and on) but there’s a high density in Echols dorms (because they got picked for those very skills!) Two different times I found out a few weeks after I met people that they were fluent in German. It’s just a cool concentration of some of the most interesting people at UVa. </p>
<p>The only drawback I can think of is there’s generally less partying, but people still go out on the weekends, so if you want to you definitely can. There’s just a slight bit less of that.</p>