As a student, I hated my dorm, which had prison-style showers and was just a giant pit. Today I see some colleges still have some pretty lousy dorms. Others have luxury suites.
What schools have the nicest dorms for freshmen?
Loyola University Maryland was in the top 5 schools with “dorms like palaces” a few years ago when D started. As a freshman she was in a suite - 2 and 2 with a shared bathroom. Lots more closet space than I’d seen in any other dorms.
You’re only staying in college for three months. Wasting your money parents so you can live in a luxury dorm IS NOT worth it
University of Scranton across all grades has amazing housing.
The New England LACs have very nice housing.
The worst by far is Ursinus College.
The two nicest dorms I have seen are Kirk Douglas Hall at St. Lawrence and Bates 280 at Bates College. Snyder Hall at Siena College was pretty impressive as well.
@NASA2014 I’m the parent here, and I’m willing to pay more to keep my children from living in the kind of hellhole that I had to endure. I visited my nephew’s dorm a few years ago, and it was just awful.
I don’t know where you got the three months figure from, but the freshman year lasts eight months on campus. And if the dorms are nice enough, he might want to stay on campus instead of getting an apartment.
Washington University in St. Louis has very, very nice dorms.
Dorms at Sonoma State get lots of raves - all suite or townhouse style, and available all four years.
I am a stickler for facilities, but food is probably more important than suite-style housing. Lots of schools have nice housing but relatively few have really good, healthy food.
^^agree.
^^ Yep. My daughter eliminated a school in her top three after she ate there. (that was fine with me, it was also the most expensive of the three)
From my many college tours and visits, Dartmouth, Princeton, Williams, Hamilton and Bowdoin are tops in both housing and food. Claremont colleges (Pomona, Pitzer, et al.) as well. The Seven Sisters (Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr…) are also excellent but that may be a function of not having men around living like pigs. Brown, where my D attends, not so much. Good food is overrated as there are so many flexible options off-plan and our children eat so irregularly, I don’t think it makes much difference to them. Overall, you could look at the schools have the highest endowment per student, and it would correlate with best housing pretty well.
Williams, Hamilton, Pomona. Even at schools with generally nice residence halls, though, options differ in quality and scale. As an opinion, halls that house more than about 150 students can have an undesirable institutional quality.
Regarding luxury suites, I have heard of them as a way of attracting students. Consider whether that degree of luxury would be necessary.
We visited 17 colleges on our travels. The Amherst College freshman dorms, which surround the main quadrangle, were probably our favorite. The University of Chicago and Pomona College both had very nice dorms, as did Haverford and Stanford. I hear that Wash U. and Bowdoin are also particularly nice, but we didn’t visit either.
I don’t remember what building it actually was, but a building shown on a tour at TCNJ was the worst! It was just gross, dark, dank, and prisonlike. As far as suite style, i would say Temple was nicest and for traditional style, i would say Bentley was nice. Since someone mentioned food ;
of all campuses I have visited (I try to eat at them all if possible!). Rutgers (Livingston) was by far the best and Fordham was by far the worst.
Wash U dorms are lovely.
Trinity University wins all kinds of awards. Every dorm room has a private balcony, and they are 2 plus 2 suite style, with cleaning service. I was ready to move in myself. 
I think you made need to narrow down the choices in terms of grades and test scores to get any more meaningful input. Not much sense to discuss Ivy League dorms if that is out of reach, etc.
Amherst first years live like kings and queens on their own centrally located quad with some seriously nice dorms (not all, but most of them). After frosh year it’s a lottery, sophs get the last draw and work their way up to nice housing as they age. There are several dorms that are brand new, recently remodeled or opening next year. But D’s frosh dorm is pretty seriously nice…fireplace and sofas and dining tables in common room, tons of storage, drywall not concrete block walls, beautiful wood floors, more space than needed, huge windows.
We saw Temple’s honors dorm and it was quite nice, all suites, good light, modern. She liked Emory’s. Nice high ceilings. Wooster - the one they show on the tour is by far the nicest, the rest are meh. Oberlin’s weren’t memorable. Albright’s were pretty run down. I can’t recall seeing Northwestern’s, inside, I don’t think they were on the tour. Miami’s (OH) were lovely and modern and light. Conn’s were pretty average. D spent two summers in Brown’s housing and wasn’t impressed, not the grad school singles the first summer nor the newish freshman ones she had the next.
Sometimes pretty mediocre schools that are desperate to attract full pay students put a disproportionate amount of their spending into posh dorms and dosh student centers. I know a school that re-does its student center ever couple of years but does not bother to spend a cent on decent academics. Academics don’t attract wealthy 18 year olds.
Alabama has thousands of “super suites” which consist of 4 private bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in a super suite, along with a kitchenette and living room.
Students and parents love the super suites.
Plenty of standard doubles housing as well.
DD goes to Alabama and they have some great dorms. She has a private bedroom and large closet, shares a bath with one other girl, and a common area/ kitchenette for 4 of them. The Honors college dorms as well as several other buildings have this setup. Of course, they also have a 40 yr old 14 story traditional style building that is not nice.