After a few weeks, a communal bathroom won'Â?t feel weird. Traditional dorms are really not as bad as everyone says they are. However, these bathrooms are gender-specific, so you won'Â?t have to shower in a stall next to someone of the opposite gender, and these bathrooms are generally really clean. The downside of traditional dorms is that you have to share a bathroom with everyone else in your wing, and the rooms are a little smaller and nothing fancy. Students in traditional dorms are also more likely to congregate and socialize in the floor lounges, which in most dorms are the central hub you have to pass through in order to get to your room. In traditional dorms however, it'Â?s more socially acceptable to keep your door open if you want people to feel free to pop in and say hello. This is not to say that you can'Â?t make friends in affiliated dorms, but it just doesn'Â?t happen as organically. Students in affiliated dorms tend to keep their doors closed for some reason.

The downside of affiliated housing is obviously the price and also the lack of social interaction.

You only have to share your bathroom with one other person (your roommate), your rooms are much newer and carpeted, and they'Â?re slightly bigger than traditional rooms. If you live in affiliated housing, you will pay almost twice as much as you would in traditional housing (almost $1000 a month), but you are basically living in a hotel. When it comes to picking traditional versus affiliated housing, you get what you pay for.

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