Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Penn has two nice freshman dorms(Hill, Lauder) plus the older freshman quad dorms are halfway done with renovations and those will be nice soon. The upperclass dorms are a mix but not bad.
Ivies are old campuses. Dorms are never going to be the same glitz as the big southern schools. No one picks ivies for dorms. You pick it for the unparalleled education and outcomes and the state of the art research spaces.
Lauder is an upperclassmen dorm being used to house freshmen while the Quad is being renovated. It have a freshman this year. It is suites and they are lovely. However, I wish she had the normal freshmen experience of doubles along a long hall with doors open all of the time. I also don’t think college kids need to live in dorms that are nicer than their house at home.
Anonymous wrote:Penn has two nice freshman dorms(Hill, Lauder) plus the older freshman quad dorms are halfway done with renovations and those will be nice soon. The upperclass dorms are a mix but not bad.
Ivies are old campuses. Dorms are never going to be the same glitz as the big southern schools. No one picks ivies for dorms. You pick it for the unparalleled education and outcomes and the state of the art research spaces.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The newer dorms at Cornell are nice.
Which ones and how do you get it
Anonymous wrote:What a weird topic.
You don't go to college to live in luxury dorms. Having lived in genuinely crappy apartments in my 20s, none of the dorms I ever saw at Ivy schools (attended two for undergrad and grad) were terrible. They could be basic. But it's part of the fun and being in college.
Anonymous wrote:You consider the Harvard houses not nice?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Princeton -- only bad ones are Rocky and Mathey.
Butler, Whitman, NCW/Yeh all very nice (some in Gothic style too) with AC.
Forbes debatable -- decent facilities, but far.
The rooms at Rocky and Mathey are nothing special but the buildings are beautiful from the outside.
Whitman, NCW, and Yeh are all pretty new. The worst was First but it’s getting torn down and Hobson should be nice when it’s finished in a few years.
See, this is just for visitors and proud parents. For the person living there, it doesn't help with daily problems.
Anonymous wrote:Recent Yale grad here - a lot of the dorms have been renovated. When I was there, they were renovating one residential college per year.
I got to live in one of the renovated dorms and it was beautiful - new but retained a lot of its character. Also the college facilities were amazing - gym, a cinema, a cafe and a late night snack bar, a music room, dance studio, and lots of places to study and hang out.
Anonymous wrote:Ugh, so many reasons not to go to Ivies. Luckily, equally small chance of being accepted!
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:The newer dorms at Cornell are nice.
Which ones and how do you get it
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I've heard that Dartmouth is building new undergraduate housing, but yeah, they're mostly awful. Renovations sound great but on a compact campus they often mean that you'll spend multiple years in old nasty housing being woken up at 6:00 am by noisy construction in the dorms adjacent to yours...which will be open the year after you graduate.
My memories of Yale are totally defined by the shabby, dark and irregular quality of the housing. They've renovated a lot but it's still not great, especially because everyone pays the same amount but the luck of the housing lottery or willingness to submit fake doctor notes can make the difference between a stunning suite or a dumpy rathole.
Although residential colleges and dorm rooms were supposedly selected mostly randomly and only to balance things by geography, gender and interests, that was not the case. Inevitably the most well-off or connected students ended up in the most spacious, historically special or appealing 1st year suites. I understand that Harvard did things quite similarly. Not sure if others are more evolved.
My kid is in a beautiful new dorm at Cornell. There were a few new dorms built a couple of years ago, and one or two large dorms that are closed this year for renovation (which has caused a bit of a housing shortage), but should be really nice beginning next fall.