For all those eager college-bound college students, we are putting together a guide and review on freshmen dorms at universities all over the country. To start with, we asked our college users from Georgetown University to weigh in on the freshmen year housing.
Quick overview: At Georgetown, all first years must live on campus, and there are 4 specific residence halls for freshmen. Most of the dorm rooms are doubles and triples, but there’s an eight person loft with two floors. During the summer before your freshman year, you’ll be asked to do CHARMS (Campus Housing Roommate Matching System) to find a roommate. You answer a survey, and the program suggests people with similar living preferences and you can message each other anonymously to discuss compatibility. If you choose not to participate in the program, you are randomly paired up with others that had chosen similarly. You and your roommate are then randomly placed into one of these four freshmen dorms:
Village C West
Location: It is located pretty much in the center of campus, so it’s easy to get to anywhere you want on campus.
Best Feature: Private bathroom
Worst Feature: Smallest room. Also, laundry room is under VCE, which means you have to lug your dirty laundry across the patio.
Village C West, more affectionately known as VCW among Georgetown students, is a hotel-styled dorm. The dorms include a private bathroom located within your room that you share with your roommates. However, as a result of the bathroom, VCW rooms tend to be smaller than the rooms in other dorms. There are approximately 8 floors in VCW, and on each floor there is a trash room and a common room. The common room contains couches that you can lounge and a kitchen with an oven, stove, refrigerator, and microwave. VCW is also where the legendary 8 person loft is located if you are lucky enough to be placed there!
Harbin Hall
Location: This is right next to VCW, so it also a really central location.
Best Feature: Spacious bedroom
Worst Feature: Communal bathrooms
Harbin is a dorm with bedroom rooms and bathrooms located outside of the room. The rooms are set up in a cluster format, with the rooms arranged in a circle with the bathroom in the middle. The clusters of rooms are single-gendered, but there can be multiple clusters of different genders on the same floor. There are about 3 clusters per floor and 9 floors in total. It is the highest building on Georgetown campus, so those who live in Harbin can have the highest view on campus.
New South
Location: On the edge of the campus, so if most of your classes on the opposite side of campus, you’re in for a long walk.
Best Feature: Next to the New South student center that opened just last year!
Worst Feature: Noisiest dorm
New South is the newest freshman dorm of the four. It has the best view on campus, because about half of its dorm overlook the Potomac River. The floor is laid out with rows of rooms that face each other on either side of a very long hall way, which also means there are a lot of people in this dorm. The rooms in New South are known to be the largest of the four dorms and each room has a sink.
Darnall Hall
Location: Furtherest freshmen dorm
Best Feature: On top of Epicurean
Worst Feature: Far from everything else
Whereas the three other dorms are located in central campus, Darnell is unfortunately located on the far north edge of Georgetown. However, this isn’t a huge issue for many as Georgetown isn’t a particularly large campus and most places can be reached within 10 minutes from Darnell. The floor layout of Darnall is very similar to that of New South, except the rooms do not have a sink. Darnell is located right on top of Epicurean, one of two cafeterias on Georgetown campus and the only one that is open 24 hours a day.
Want to see what they look like in person? Here’s a video tour of all the freshmen dorms at Georgetown:
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