As a freshman at CMU, you are also required to live on campus for the first year. When choosing on campus housing, you are asked to list your top choices for buildings and corresponding room types. You cannot choose the exact room number. Note: lofted beds (raised beds with accessible space underneath) are being phased out by CMU. Many floor plans contain lofted beds, but do not expect to have a lofted bed.
Residence Hall Dorms
Residence hall dorms are split into two main types, traditional and suite style. Traditional type residence halls consist of traditional style rooms. Examples include: Stever, Morewood E-Tower, Mudge, Hamerschlag, and Donner. Suite type residence halls consist of semi-suite and suite style rooms. Examples include: Morewood Gardens, Mudge (yes Mudge has both!), Boss, McGill, and Resnik. Note: Suite rooms are only available in West Wing.
Traditional Room
Traditional rooms are the type of room you might imagine when thinking about college dorms. These rooms are typically smaller. Bathrooms are communal, and located on each floor. Sometimes multiple communal bathrooms exist on each floor. Dorms with traditional rooms often have communal kitchens as well, although the state of them varies heavily. They will often have lots of shared common space as well. Traditional rooms come in single, double, and triple flavors. Single houses 1 student, double houses 2, etc. Traditional doubles will cost $5,000 per semester for 2022-2023, singles cost slightly more, and triples cost slightly less.
Semi-suite Room
Semi-suite rooms differ most in that they have private bathrooms. Oftentimes, semi-suite rooms will share a private bathroom with another semi-suite room. The bathroom is between the two rooms, and sometimes a hallway links the two rooms to the bathroom. You (the resident) are responsible for cleaning the private bathroom. These residence halls tend to have more communal kitchens available, but not always. Semi-suite rooms come in single, double, triple, and quad flavors. These only refer to residents in each room, different capacity semi-suite rooms can be connected by bathrooms, and sometimes you won’t share a bathroom with another room at all. You can only tell by looking up the specific building floor plan the bathroom situation. Semi-suite rooms are almost universally more expensive than any traditional room.
Suite Room
Similar to semi-suite rooms, suite rooms also have private bathrooms (sometimes shared between rooms). However, instead of being connected directly to the bathroom or connected by a hallway, suite rooms have a miniature lounge area that can be as big as the bedroom itself. These are locked to other residents, accessible only to the residents in that suite room or the connected group of suite rooms. Other than the additional living area, other conditions are similar to semi-suite rooms. Suite rooms come in single and double flavors. Suite rooms are more expensive than semi-suite rooms. West Wing is the only dorm with suite rooms.
Apartment Dorms
Apartment dorms are different from residence hall dorms in that each room comes with its own private bathroom and kitchen. Generally, these also have larger rooms, but not always. These dorms are also typically farther from academic halls than residence hall dorms. There are far fewer apartment dorms than residence hall dorms. Examples include: Residence on Fifth and Clyde House for 2022-23. These are typically the most expensive rooms, but living in an apartment style dorm allows you to purchase the yellow meal plan, which is far cheaper than the next cheapest option and is recommended for students who want to cook for themselves.