Ranking My Carleton Dorms

Here is a ranking of every dorm I’ve lived in on campus! Plus a few honorable mentions…

4. Myers Hall

In last place, I have lovingly placed my freshman year dorm, Myers Hall. I have fond memories of living in this second-floor double with my roommate Claire, but Myers itself has a few more cons than pros. It is very conveniently located right next to one of the dining halls (LDC) and is pretty close to the Recreation Center, but I thought that the small lounge spaces made building community a bit difficult. Also, the white tile walls in the hallways can be fun when students draw on them with Expo markers, but when they are blank they make the place look a little sterile. 

If you are assigned to a Myers double, I recommend putting the desks by the windows or ends of your beds. At the start of the year, Claire and I set up our desks in the middle of the room, thinking we were creating a cool room divider, but the arrangement was a little awkward, and took up a lot of space. We were both pretty messy as freshmen, and our room perpetually looked like a tornado had gone through it. 

3. Musser Hall

I lived in Musser Hall for one term last fall. Musser gets a bad rep around campus, but I believe it is over-hated. It is inhabited mostly by freshmen and sophomores, for whom the location is admittedly a little inconvenient, since most freshmen are housed on the East side of campus. However, it is close to town, Burton Dining Hall, and most of the Humanities buildings. Also, this residence hall is notorious for being “musty,” but it recently got a renovation, which has apparently taken the mustiness out of Musser. I can’t speak to the experience of living in New Musser, but Old Musser was a perfectly fine place to live. It had nice lounge spaces with inviting couches and large windows. If you are assigned here as a freshman, don’t despair! There is a good chance that you will find a great community of floormates here.

2. Watson Hall

In second place, we have my Watson single from last spring! This was a great dorm to live in. I was on the top floor, so I had a fabulous view of campus. It was great to have a space all to myself, and the room was pretty spacious for one person. The only real downsides to this room were the thin walls and my reliance on the sometimes-faulty elevator to get up to the seventh floor.

1. Owens House

This year, I am living in a townhouse with three other students! I am very lucky to have this housing placement as a junior, and I am eternally grateful to my housemate Sara for pulling us in using her senior housing lottery number. The townhouse is called Owens, which has three apartments within it, each housing about four students. The first floor of our apartment has a single room, a kitchen, a living and dining area, and a bathroom. Upstairs has a double, a single, and a second bathroom. The room I share with my roommate Sam is very spacious. We each have large closets, plenty of floor space and big windows that let in a lot of natural light. These houses are right behind Musser, so we are super close to town and my favorite breakfast location: Burton. A downside of living so close to the west side of campus, however, is the notorious train, which blares its horn at all hours of the day and night.

Honorable Mention #1: London 

I spent last winter off campus! My London flat can’t get a spot on a list of Carleton dorms since it was technically in another country, but it deserves a shout out nonetheless. On my program, our group of twenty students were split into flats, each housing about 10 people: some in singles, some in doubles, and some in triples. I had a single, thankfully! We lived on a quiet little street in South Kensington (a very posh neighborhood!) and the view was lovely. Since I was only staying there for a few months, and I had limited space in my luggage, I didn’t decorate my walls this term, which did make it feel less homey than a Carleton dorm. The bed was also comically uncomfortable, but I got used to it. In London, I was out and about most of the time, so the flat was really just a space to sleep and recuperate!

Honorable Mention #2: Parish House

I can’t really claim to have “lived” in Parish because I only stayed there for a few weeks while I worked Reunion this past summer. It is a really unique place to live on campus; you get the atmosphere of being in a house, but it is set up similarly to a residence hall/dorm. For the few weeks in June that I was there, it was horrendously hot. Luckily I was working most of the time and I had a fan, so I survived. It can be scary when you move into a dorm in the early fall, when the summer heat lingers and you realize your dorm doesn’t have air conditioning (some do, some don’t). But don’t worry too much. For most of the school year, the Minnesota weather is cool or cold, so air conditioning is not an issue. 

These were my humble abodes! Next year, I’m not sure where I will be living. I am really loving the townhouse life, but finding a single room somewhere also sounds appealing. We shall see…

Jess (he/him) is a junior English major and Creative Writing minor from Milwaukee, WI. He works for Admissions and Off-Campus Studies, blogging up a storm. On campus, he can be found on the Bald Spot with a book, next to the CD player in the Record Libe, or along the trails of the Arb on a late night run. He is a big fan of Carleton’s spring term and dining hall vegetarian sausage. As far as Northfield coffee shops go, he remains loyal to Goodbye Blue Monday.