It’s no secret that some Salisbury University freshman dorms are better than others. While most of your time in college will consist of you being out and about, your dorm is your home! It’s the place you go back to each night after a long day of classes and extracurriculars. It’s also an easy way to make an ample amount of friends. While, for the most part, you can’t really pick your dorm here at SU, it definitely helps to know where each of them stand. Here is my personal ranking of the 10 freshman housing options at Salisbury University.
Okay, so this is totally biased because I currently live in this hall, but Choptank is dope. This is one of three high rise residence halls at SU. It’s six floors and consists of both doubles’ clusters (2 roommates per room, 5 rooms per cluster, one communal bathroom with 2 toilets, showers, and sinks) and triples (3 roommates per one room, personal bathroom one shower, sink, and toilet). I personally live in a triple with my two best friends from high school and I LOVE IT. Choptank is renovated and has AC. We also have a sand volleyball court right behind the building, which is awesome to use when it’s nice out. The resident assistants are all super chill and nice.
The lobby has a full kitchen, multiple study rooms, a flat screen tv, couches, and a pool/ping pong table. The closest friends that I have, I met on my floor. My room is HUGE and having my own bathroom is awesome, but the cluster bathrooms are clean and really nice as well. The floors are carpeted and you can use tacks in your walls, so decorating is easy and doesn’t look all clunky with command hooks and what not. Wherever you end up in Choptank, you will be happy! Oh and if you hear anyone calling the building “Sloptank”, it’s merely a nickname made up by the people living there, it is far from a slop!
For anyone else at Salisbury, Chester Hall is arguably the best of freshman housing. It has almost the exact same set up as Choptank, but the only difference that I have noticed is that when you first walk into the building, the layout is much more open. This can be seen as a good or bad thing, depending if you want your RA on duty that weekend night to get a real good look at you walking in after a night out… Anyways, other than that, friends of mine that live there say that they really like it.
Just like the other high rises, Chester is close to pretty much everything on campus, and especially close to the dining hall and gym (my two biggest concerns lol.) It’s clean and new, so if you don’t have the honor of being Choptank champion, Chester is the next best thing!
Nanticoke is one of the four suite-style buildings located around the “quad” (an open grass area for students’ use). These rooms are Jack-and-Jill style, meaning two double rooms connected by one bathroom. There are also a few singles available, and those are suite style as well. The building is three floors, so it may not be the best fit for those students that want something a little more “apartment” like, like myself. However, most of the suite-style buildings are reserved for LLCs, which are groups of students that share a major and do projects and activities together (great for those of you who have trouble making friends on your own!)
This doesn’t mean that non LLC members won’t be put in one of these buildings, though! Nanticoke is mostly for exercise science majors. This means that the building has its own gym that can be used by any Nanticoke resident (SO JEALOUS.)
The second of the suite-style buildings, Wicomico was renovated in 2011 and is located right next to Choptank. The rooms are really comfy and there are a good amount of outlets in this building, so I’ve seen a lot of rooms decorated really nicely with lights. The windows in this building open up wide so I always hear music playing from people’s rooms (and some conversations lol.) It has a lounge area and lobby just like the other quad buildings, and it is clean and cozy.
This is third of the four suite-style buildings on the quad. Same set up. This building has a dumpster right outside, which is super nice so you don’t have to lug your trash down the sidewalk. The lounge area is super cozy and great for studying
The last of the four suite-style buildings. This particular building housed a lot of the honors LLC this year. I am a member of the honors program but decided not to live with the LLC. I was able to tour Manokin, however and it is quite nice. The lounge area is comfortable and the building is new clean and renovated. Nothing special, but definitely not a bad living situation. However, and I am not sure if this true for every suite-style building, but friends of mine that love in Manokin said that the bathroom doors do not lock. This means that the two roommates sharing the bathroom with you can come into your room at anytime, so do what you will with that information!
Oh, Severn. This building is like the ugly sibling of the high rise buildings. Severn has yet to be renovated and it sure does show. Whether it be the dated linoleum floors, brick walls (command strip central), or the off-putting bathrooms, Severn has definitely seen better days. All in all, its not horrible. Friends of mine that live there say that it’s not pretty, but it’s doable. Also, word on the street is that Severn should be getting renovated within the next year or so, so maybe there is some hope??
Chesapeake is apartment style living. Not many freshmen live in Chesapeake, and that is probably for the best. Chesapeake room sizes vary but each apartment includes a full kitchen and two bathrooms. You and your roommates are responsible for cleaning and providing paper products for the bathroom. It is also pretty far from all other freshman housing, except for St. Martins. Honestly, I feel like this building is not ideal for a freshman who is getting used to college lifestyle because you have a lot of responsibility. On top of it all, this building is out of date and more of a hassle than anything.
We have come to the leg of the list that is just plain ugly. St. Martin is suite style living with two rooms connected by a “bathroom” (I use this term loosely as it is really a just a toilet and gross shower.) The sinks are located in the rooms, which I always find weird. The lighting in rooms is super creepy and every room that I’ve been in has an old odor. The closets have no doors and the room is super crowded. Overall, all I can say is that any time that I’ve been in there, I silently thanked the lord that I was just visiting. Not the cutest living situation for freshmen, especially people who are a little more high maintenance. This residence hall is pretty far from the others, but it is close to our new academic commons, which is a major plus, and one of the only reasons it’s not the last on the list lol.
And dead last, we have Dogwood Village. Dogwood is a cottage-style, single bedroom complex. I really don’t have much else to say about this building other than that it literally looks like a prison cell. The fact that it is all single living in the first place is tough enough for freshmen who are trying to make friends, but it is also secluded from the rest of the freshmen housing which makes it that much harder and just plain annoying. DV is super old and run down, and I genuinely hope that none of you get stuck there. Fortunately, Dogwood is primarily for sophomores, so it would really be a last resort for you guys.
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