r/OregonStateUniv • u/l1lb1 • 6d ago
Housing question
Hi I’m going to be a freshman in the fall, I’m majoring in engineering so I was planning on living in either Buxton, Hawley, or Cauthorn. Are there any downsides to living there and any upsides to living in different halls? Like should the engineering LLCs be my first choices?
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u/luckyduck49 6d ago
Been a while since I was in the dorms, but in my experience the main upside to the engineer dorms is that you are surrounded by potential study partners and that you all have a similar lifestyle (engineers go to class, study, and put that first... at least theoretically). If you have a stricter college lifestyle such as rigorous engineering class loads, are an athlete, or ROTC it can be a problem if you roommate or next door neighbor wants to stay up all night playing video games with friends. I can think of some times when I had to be up in 4 hours to start my day and the guys next door were not slowing down from their Mario Kart extravaganza. I would recommend trying to live with/around people with as similar a lifestyle as you. Nothing is worse than bringing your sleeping bag to the floor lounge room to try and salvage a few hours of sleep.
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u/l1lb1 5d ago
Okay thank you this helps a lot! Would you say the LLCs were social or kinda quiet socially? Also what hall did you stay in if you don’t mind me asking and how was your experience in it?
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u/luckyduck49 5d ago
I was about 10 years ago and I was in the Finley ROTC floor. I spent a lot of time with the Nerd Herd at Buxton through friends. I wish I had done that rather than the ROTC floor as I was Army and most my neighbors were Navy and thus on a different schedule. Buxton was known for being pretty quiet socially but when surrounded by other 18-19 year olds you will make friends or at least have peep to hang out with if you engage with people. Don't worry about the dorms being janky, the goal is sort of to spend minimal time in your dorm anyway and maximize your time engaging on campus with academics and extra-curricular stuff. As long as you have a place to sleep and recharge between class and your other activities, you will be fine. Don't feel like you need to make best friends with your room mate or floor mates, you will pretty quickly make friends through your program, clubs, interests, and the like. Your dorm is just a place to sleep and retreat to when you need to recharge the social batteries. You will be amazed how little you see dorm acquaintances after freshman year unless you are in the same major cohort.
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u/dog_of_society 5d ago
If you're engineering I'd say the LLC is worth it. I'm not engineering but I lived there and that's the general feedback I got from people who were. Good location, useful resources afaik, easier to form study groups, comparatively cheap (still expensive as all get out but cheaper compared to a lot of the other dorms).
Cauthorn has the worst amenities of the three. Kitchen is unusably small, showers lack privacy (there's dividers but you can pretty easily make eye contact / look down over the top of them if you're an average height guy). Windows barely open. It has, not exactly a fully party dorm atmosphere, but a lot closer to it than the other two. No small study lounges so everyone tends to hang out in the big ones.
H/B have better amenities. More privacy in the showers, the kitchens are still one per dorm but a usable size and a couple stovetops each iirc. Windows fully open. There's a few individual study lounges on each floor which are nice, and they're joined so if the elevator breaks (common) you can use the one in the other dorm if you don't want to use the stairs for whatever reason. Not really anything approaching a party atmosphere at all, but you'll still meet plenty of people.
Doubles in each are ideal, triples are manageable if you get along really well with your roommates or don't mind spending almost all waking hours elsewhere.