Amherst CollegeCampus Housing Summary

Written by Lem Atanga McCormick

Lem Atanga McCormick

Hometown

Chicago, IL

Major

Pre-Med (Biology and French)

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Freshmen live amongst themselves, which is usually a cool thing because it facilitates the sometimes-difficult process of making friends. Sophomores are usually the ones getting screwed by being at the bottom of room draw. One way of getting out of room draw for sophomores is to apply for theme housing. Another is finding upperclassmen who will put your name in with their room groups, thus raising your ranking. All upperclass dorms are spacious and comfortable to live in. The social dorms are the way to go if you’re intent on living very close to your friends. Unfortunately, the downside to this living environment is that the socials are often the sites of the loudest, most rambunctious parties. Morrow, Moore, and Cohan are the quiet studying dorms, and Cohan has been dubbed the “thesis-writing dorm.” The limited space in freshmen dorms presents a challenge to one’s interior design skills. If two or more people are going to sleep in one room, bunk beds are a very good idea, and if you’re not doing that, you’ll probably want to raise your bed high and put your desk under it to save space.

Most of the dorms have that New England look: brownstones with white windows, but they’re not overly decorated with statues of winged lions and weeping angles like at other universities. The dorm you live in definitely doesn't place you under any social category whatsoever, but some common social trends at Amherst are that athletes and other partiers live in the social dorms; theme house members usually associate with their theme house neighbors; and quiet and above-average-studious people usually end up living in Cohan or Morrow at some point.