College Dorms Question

[bballmom56]

I guess my kids' college is one of the exceptions. They built a new dorm for sophomore housing. The cost for that dorm was the same for the other two much older sophomore dorms. They did not raise the price for the new one. Selecting dorms for soph. year was done by a lottery. Unfortunately, DS did not get the new dorm, but was still quite happy in one of the older ones.

 

[Lynne M]

Nothing new. I started college in 77. There were the regular dorms, and the fancy high rise dorms. The high rise dorms cost more.

 

[PrincessKsMom]

I have 3 kids in college...1 Junior and 2 Freshman. Between the 3 of them they applied to at least 20 colleges and there was never an option to choose their living space. The freshman got the oldest dorms and the Juniors and Seniors got the better/best dorms & apartments. Up until reading this post, I never heard of schools giving Freshman an option. Why is it that in our society everything is based on who can afford to pay vs. those that can't?

This is what I thought. Guess I've got a lot to learn.

 

[Jill in Chicago]

At DePaul, in Chicago, you pay more for the better suites. They have such a great selection from traditional rooms to suites for four with a kitchen.

The overall information is usually presented in a morning session, and then the information pertaining to your specific major is usually in the afternoon. We did them on two different days because we live so close.

 

[LisaR]

OP here - that's what I was thinking. DH said when he went to school in the 80's, you got to list your top dorm choices and some were nicer than others, but it was a lottery system that chose where you were going to live. Everybody paid the same for housing.

and for the person who asked if everyone should pay the same...yes I think they should. There's enough competition in life, having to accept your fate, so to speak, is a great lesson that more kids need to learn. Money doesn't buy everything. imho

Of course money doesn't buy everything.

When I went to college, the dorms were all the same. They did refurbish them along the way and I don't know if they charged more for those but the size and amenities were all the same. They likely just raised the cost for all dorms the following year but again, they were all the same.

Dorms aren't like that today. There are standard dorms from "back in the day" that are just a room with multiple beds and desks that don't even have bathrooms. On the other end, there are rooms where everyone has their own private bedroom and bathroom, plus a full kitchen, and many come furnished with extras like flat screen tv's. Do you really think it should be left up to a lottery system to decide who gets what room?

Should Disney have a fixed price for their rooms? When you show up, the lottery will determine if you get the Grand Floridian or the All Stars. That just isn't how life works. Money can't buy everything but it can buy some things!

 

[LisaR]

I guess my kids' college is one of the exceptions. They built a new dorm for sophomore housing. The cost for that dorm was the same for the other two much older sophomore dorms. They did not raise the price for the new one. Selecting dorms for soph. year was done by a lottery. Unfortunately, DS did not get the new dorm, but was still quite happy in one of the older ones.

Out of curiosity, were the new dorms pretty much the same as the old dorms in terms of size and amenities?

 

[VAfamily1998]

OP here - that's what I was thinking. DH said when he went to school in the 80's, you got to list your top dorm choices and some were nicer than others, but it was a lottery system that chose where you were going to live. Everybody paid the same for housing.

and for the person who asked if everyone should pay the same...yes I think they should. There's enough competition in life, having to accept your fate, so to speak, is a great lesson that more kids need to learn. Money doesn't buy everything. imho

What would you think if all rooms at Disney World cost the same amount of money--let's say $250/night...and when you arrive they assign you to your room...wouldn't you be upset if you got a room at All Stars Sports for your $250/night, and other people who also paid $250/night got a concierge level view room at the Contemporary?

 

[mamacatnv]

DS's dorms had a price structure for the older dorms and the newer hotel style. Then there were communal living with cooking but those were reserved for 2nd years and up. DS chose the older dorms, he preferred the feel of a "true" dorm vs. the newer hotel style.
There were also 3 levels of dining plans with different prices.

As far as the tours went, I got the impression that the academics were already settled on or the kids would not be interested in the college. The tours were there to highlight the extra's, the living community and all the associated amenities. DS actually ruled out one campus because the food in the main dining facility was lousy.

 

[kateydid]

I'm surprised to hear this is the norm. At my alma mater (The College of New Jersey) housing was all based on luck. Freshman year dorms were assigned and the following years it was based on a lottery system. Obviously some dorms were better than others and those were chosen first by people with the good numbers, but we all paid the same. I only graduated a few years ago and I don't think things have changed. My sister goes to a private school and pays more for her air conditioned dorm, I attributed the difference to public vs private schools but I guess I was wrong!

 

[pacrosby]

OP here - that's what I was thinking. DH said when he went to school in the 80's, you got to list your top dorm choices and some were nicer than others, but it was a lottery system that chose where you were going to live. Everybody paid the same for housing.

and for the person who asked if everyone should pay the same...yes I think they should. There's enough competition in life, having to accept your fate, so to speak, is a great lesson that more kids need to learn. Money doesn't buy everything. imho

Well money in fact does buy a lot but personally I'm not so sure that it's in a kid's best interest to live so well in college..................especially if it's on mommy and daddy's dime. The 'college years', for too many, are not much more than a period of extended adolescensce. What a shocker to some of these young adults when they graduate and find out what living on their own is really like (unless of course mommy and daddy are going to subsidize that too).

 

[tar heel]

When I went to college, dorm amenities were not an issue. It was LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!

 

[Deb & Bill]

At some universities, there aren't enough dorm rooms, so even freshman have to live off campus in apartments. And then Mom and Dad pay whatever the cost is so their kid is safe.

Some require freshman to live on campus and no one else.

 

[iheartdisney]

OP here - that's what I was thinking. DH said when he went to school in the 80's, you got to list your top dorm choices and some were nicer than others, but it was a lottery system that chose where you were going to live. Everybody paid the same for housing.

and for the person who asked if everyone should pay the same...yes I think they should. There's enough competition in life, having to accept your fate, so to speak, is a great lesson that more kids need to learn. Money doesn't buy everything. imho

In terms of housing... yes it does!
Our nation in still in financial crisis due in part to people deciding to buy houses without examining whether or not they could afford one because it was "their dream" or "they deserved it."
In life if you want a better apartment, you pay more for it. Since college is supposed to be about preparing young adults for real life, why not teach them they get what they work for?

 

[almburr]

We have been looking at colleges for DD and all of them didnt have different options for dorms. One school has single private rooms for all Freshman, one had the standard styles for Freshman Sophomore and Juniors while the seniors got the suite styles. One college had apartment style dorms for married couples or had a child.

 

[agnes!]

Nothing personal but I really really *really* do not like the newer hotel-style dorms, or at least the way some colleges/universities have built them within the past several years.

The students have no floor-lounges for that 'third place' (in architectural-planning parlance) or quiet study-areas for the rooms that have 3 students crammed into a space supposedly meant for 2...yeah , *suuuuuuure*...the building was built how long ago? Maybe 3 or 4 or 5?...so TPTB must have known how many future students were probably going to be coming, don't tell prospectives that these rooms are 'doubles' when it is clear that they were never meant to *actually* be doubles, that's called lying by omission. There's more than one parent or student observing that 'hotel-style dorms' is simply a euphemism for 'cramming-as-many-money-makers-aka-students-into-as-little-space-as-possible'.

Give me an older dorm with public/social places planned into the building. And while we're at it, could we please have some type of kitchen or at least a bare room with counterspaces and lots of plugs where crockpots/coffeepots/electric-grills/cooking-utensils could be used?

Vent over.
agnes

 

[disykat]

Years ago at my college all the rooms cost the same. Some buildings were newer or more desirable and there was a lottery like OP said. However, all the dorms had essentiall the same double room, bathroom down the hall layout.

My school has since opened a new dorm that is more apartment style and it costs more. It only makes sense.

My son's school's new dorms have much larger rooms and bathrooms in each room. Of course they're going to cost more!

Agnes, as for the old style dorms with social spaces: My son is in an old dorm in a double room that was tripled. There are lounges in his dorm, but they are full of students living in overflow. It does look like most of those students were taken out of overflow after first term as spots in the dorm opened up, but extra space that isn't full of bodies is hard to find. My son is still always trying to find a reasonably private place to talk on the phone or skype. Fortunately, his church fellowship building is only a few blocks away and has some lounge areas that are open all day for students to hang out. He can always find a quiet space there if needed.

 

[donac]

When my ds2 started college he was in a double and there was no place for the kids to hang out except for the hallway. He never had any place to go to get quiet and he likes to read and study in quiet.

When he started sophomore year he went into an apartment. There was a kitchen, bath and a room for 2. He and his room mate worked on different schedules and with different types of computers. His roommate's computer needed to be connected to the wall where he was on a laptop. His roommate moved into the living room and set up a sheet for a wall and ds had his own room.

For the last two years he has been in the newest dorms. Each has a kitchen living room, 2 baths and each student has their own room and the door has its own keypad to get in. The bedrooms are very small but they can all find their own quiet place or be inthe living room and hang out.

He has also been in the honors floor since he started and that has helped with being able to study.

 

[MrsPete]

When I was in college in the 1980s, we had smaller, less-desirable dorms . . . and we had newer suites with nicer amenities. Think about it. It makes sense: The college built its first dorms back when the college was new . . . and at that time they were "state of the art". But as time went on and people began to expect more privacy, more space, better storage and so forth, and as the college grew and needed more dorm space, they built better accomodations. Someone still gets to live in the older dorms (for less money) and someone gets the new, swanky rooms (for more money). The college my daughter will attend next fall has about eight "categories" of rooms, each with a different pricetag. Perfectly logical.

Choices are good. If we're the family who can barely afford to get our kid into college, I want the option of the cheapest possible room. Or, if she has to have that oldest, dumpiest room because freshmen take what they can get, fine. She'll "do her time". But if I am willing to pay $$$ for her to have a newer room with a more private bathroom or a sitting room shared by just a few students, that's a good choice too. It's unfair to say that everyone pays the same price, if they don't all get the same quality of room.

Also, keep in mind that quality of the rooms (floor space, walk-in closets, carpet vs. tile) isn't the only measure of a dorm room's value. At my college, we had dorms on two opposite sides of campus (and academic buildings in the middle); each side of campus had its own cafeteria, but one served vastly superior food. However, the other side of campus was more convenient to . . . everything. So in addition to what kind of room you wanted, you had to decide whether you valued location or food more.

As my oldest and I toured colleges last year, we saw dorms with varying degrees of quality, so I think this is still pretty standard.

At the university I attended, returning students had "first dibs" on dorms -- so long as they met the next-year's-room deadline, which was something like March 1st; incoming freshmen were assigned to rooms starting around April 1st. My brother went to a different school, one with fewer dorms and a completely different housing philosophy: All freshmen who were accepted by X date were guaranteed housing . . . and once they were all assigned a spot, only then were upperclassmen allowed to enter a lottery to see who'd get a dorm and who'd be apartment hunting. Schools have different manners of handling limited housing, but I've never heard of one that did everything completely by lottery or luck.

 

[herdtoDisney]

At my ds' school, all the freshmen are required to live in the highrise dorms and have a meal plan. The rooms are small doubles, with the occasional quad. Bathrooms are down the hall and there is no air conditioning.

After freshman year, there are a bunch of options with a variety of price tags. It ranges from the dorms again, to aging townhouses (the cheapest and most popular option) to a nice new climate-controlled suite-style building. Ds applied for the townhouses but didn't get in-this year he is in the new building but he does have a room mate (it is a 5 bedroom suite, there are 6 guys living in it because the others paid the single rate and one is the RA-ds has his friend/roomate from last year). He is applying again for the least expensive option. The new building was actually next cheapest after the townhouse because it has a kitchen so he saved on the meal plan. The dorms are expensive.

It's complicated and our goal is the cheapest!

 

[punkin]

DD's college has only one price for all dorms (and they are all pretty much ancient). I also believe first year students are required to live on campus and buy a full service meal plan unless they live at home and commute.

The fact that there are differing dorm costs wouldn't put me off OP's college at all. However, the fact that academics weren't discussed AT ALL would definitely raise a red flag about the school. After all, aren't the students applying for the academics first and foremost?