University of South Carolina-Columbia Top Questions

Typical college dorms. It all comes down to how much you can pay. For the Quads, which are four bedrooms and a kitchen, it's more expensive than those that are suite style, which are two people per bedroom sharing a bathroom with two others. The dorms with hall bathrooms are the cheapest ones, but it's also the least convenient.

The dorms vary around campus. The nicer dorms are reserved for the honors students and the capstone scholars which are suite style. There are two rooms connected to a bathroom shared by four people. Other dorms are hall style in which the entire floor is one sex or the entire dorm is single sex. If you live in suite style, you are required to clean your own bathroom and supply toilet paper. If you live in the hall style dorms, the university hires people to clean the bathrooms and supply soap, toilet paper, etc.

The dorms are about the size of probably your room at home. It is an adjustment but a lot of the dorms offer community rooms and kitchens so that you can branch out and not stay in your "four-square". I am super claustrophobic and if I can make it in that room then you can do it! (:

USC has been really good about keeping up with renovating old dorms and building new ones. With so many dorms on campus it takes awhile to get renovations done to all of them, but every year I come back, more on-campus housing places have been renovated or completely redone. Most of the freshmen dorms are being converted to suite-style, with only 2 or 3 left on campus that still have traditional hall bathrooms. It is really convenient to have lots of suite-style options. Many of the dorms have large rooms, and some also have common rooms or study rooms on each floor. Many of the dorms also have kitchens on each floor, and most have at least one kitchen in the building. For upperclassmen (and sometimes freshmen), there are several different apartment-style housing options. You can live on the historic Horseshoe (center of campus) or in the recently constructed Quads. There are definitely upperclassmen who live on campus for 3 or 4 years.