About Residential Colleges

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Princeton’s seven Residential Colleges—Butler, Forbes, Mathey, New College West, Rockefeller, Whitman, and Yeh College—are at the center of undergraduate life and offer close-knit, comfortable communities where you will live, eat, study, and socialize.

Description

Your Residential College and Roommate

For the next two years, you’ll live in one of the Residential Colleges on campus. All first-year and sophomores must live and dine in a residential college.  In assigning your new home, the incoming class is divided into seven sections—reflecting the make-up of the class as a whole—and then each section is assigned electronically to one of the seven colleges.

With the staff at each Residential College, we review the information you submitted on your housing and dining forms and assign your roommate based on that information. As closely as possible, we match roommates according to lifestyles and habits, and while some roommate arrangements need a period of adjustment, friendships usually evolve quickly.

Your Residential College and roommate assignment will be sent to your Princeton email address in mid to late July. You can check your Welcome Class site for the exact date of the email. In the email, we’ll also direct you to your housing and dining contracts online, and you will be asked to electronically accept the contracts prior to a stated deadline.

You’ll need your NetID and password to access your email account. If you have any difficulty with your NetID and password, contact the Service Desk at (609) 258-4357 (609-258-HELP).

 

Support and Advice

There is a wealth of support and advice available through your Residential College, and we encourage you to take full advantage of it. Each college has a faculty head, dean, assistant dean, and director of student life, and academic advising for first-year and sophomores is based at the colleges.

As a first-year, you’re assigned a faculty academic adviser, who is also a fellow of your Residential College. Your faculty adviser is your primary source of academic guidance and approves your course selection and course changes. He or she works closely with your college dean and assistant dean, who also provide advice on courses and programs and handling academic administrative matters.

Every first-year has a Residential College adviser, a junior or senior, who is on hand to help with your adjustment to college life, answer questions, and act as leaders and mentors in all aspects of life at the University. You can also get guidance from peer academic advisers, juniors and seniors who assist your faculty adviser and offer a student perspective on selecting classes and successfully navigating academics. Resident graduate students from a range of academic departments live in your college and share their wisdom on courses and paths of study.

 

Activities in the Residential Colleges

In your first days on campus, you’ll quickly get to know your fellow Residential College members, learn about the college’s culture, and, if you’re like most students, adopt with pride and enthusiasm your college’s identity.

As individual communities, the colleges help define life at Princeton. Each has its own distinctive architecture, with a cluster of dormitories, dining halls, common rooms, academic spaces, and arts and entertainment resources.

The colleges offer a diverse range of activities and events—from intramural sports, organized study breaks, foreign language tables, and book clubs to 5K running races, Broadway show outings, lectures, and concerts. A casino night is a staple of one college’s social calendar, while others host regular barbecues, themed meals, and numerous social events. Different colleges also interact with each other through social events and intramural sports.