Ultimate Guide To Choose The BEST Dorm For McGill

It's almost July! Fall term is gradually coming closer and for new students, you must feel the start of university anxiety creeping in more than ever. So many things that you need to decide, not to mention getting mentally prepared to stay in a dormitory with a bunch of strangers! Well, not to worry, today’s blog will be all about McGill dorms. I hope that this guide will inform you all about McGill dorms and make it easier for you to choose your best dorm :)

It’s a long one, so here is a table of contents:

• What are dorms anyway?

• Residence Options

• How McGill chooses dorms for you

• Tips on Choosing your dorm (A 4 step guide)

• Dorm vs Off campus

• My Experience (+ Concluding words of advice)

What are dorms anyway?

Dorms stand for Dormitory and they are residence buildings mostly located close to campus. This is where first year students spend their first year, and it is almost mandatory for students to stay in university residences in the first year. After the first year, sadly, students need to move out of the dorms into their own apartments. In McGill, there are a total of 8 dormitory options. Students are also allowed to live off campus, meaning not in any of the residences, and instead rent their own apartment. This option is less likely chosen by first year students (probably because McGill pushes more towards Residence Experiences), but it is definitely an option. Dormitories also have facilities other than the rooms themselves. This depends on the dorm but some have a cafeteria, a gym, a games room, common rooms (shared spaces), study room and even Starbucks!

Residence Options

If you still don’t know, here are the residence options available in McGill.

(Their nicknames written in brackets)

• Carrefour Sherbrook (C4)

• La Citadelle (La Cit)

• Royal Victoria College (RVC)

• New Residence (New Rez)

• Solin Hall (Solin)

• University Hall (Uni Hall)

• Douglas Hall (Douglas)

• Upper Residence (Upper Rez): includes buildings McConnel, Molson and Gardner

How McGill chooses dorms for you

1) Rank all the dorms

McGill will first ask everyone to rank their dorm preference. Not only do you rank the residence building itself, but the type of room as well. Single? Double? All girls dorm? (only for Royal Victoria College). McGill has a ranking practice sheet on their website so you can check it out here: https://www.mcgill.ca/students/housing/files/students.housing/practice_ranking_2019.pdf

It looks like this:

It’s better to think that getting your first choice is pretty rare (unless you are a scholarship student, lucky you! You get priority), so your top 5 should be well selected.

(Though on the McGill website it states “around 75% of students are assigned to their first choice”)

Personally, I got my 4th choice! After you have “practiced” your ranking, you need to input those through Minerva (McGill’s self-service administrative system interface online).

2) The Lottery

The dorms will be assigned through a computer-generated lottery. It is important to note that you need to have been admitted to McGill and have payed the residence application deposit (total of $1530) to be eligible to enter. So be careful with the deadline dates! (Usually beginning of July)

The results will also be displayed on Minerva so keep an eye out for that as well.

3) Roommate matching survey

Thankfully, McGill doesn’t just match roommates randomly. Along with the residence ranking form, you will also have to fill out a simple survey regarding yourself and potential roommate. Questions are asks about your personality, tidiness, whether you are a morning or night person, nationality/ethnicity (and whether you prefer to be with the same as yours) and habits. Note that McGill does not pair mixed genders for obvious reasons.

What I didn’t know though was that actually you can be in control of who you want to be with. I personally know many people that found their roommate themselves through Facebook or WeChat. Their method was simple as posting on the “McGill entering class” Facebook page introducing themselves and saying they were looking for a roommate. After finding a person that they hit it off with or perhaps had many similar interests, they would send to McGill their specific roommate request. I guess this way, you can actually be in control of who you choose and you can get to know the person well in advance of living together.

Either you want a glimpse of your roommate or let McGill surprise you, I say its really up to you :)

Tips on choosing your dorm

Now you must be thinking how am I going to rank all 15 dorm types?? Here are the steps I took to make this process easier:

1) Do your research

It’s important to know and be able to differentiate the dorms so you can get a better picture of your preferences. I did a lot of research not only the McGill website but through Reddit and YouTube. I feel it is better to see what actual students say of the dorms than to read McGill’s praises for each dorm which are… pretty unrealistic! Another big trap would be to focus on the photos. Angles, lighting and decors can do a lot to alter how the dorm actually looks like.

Lucky for you, I made a blog summarizing each residence so you don’t need to do all the research! Might be slightly biased, but I think it’s worth a look: Coming soon

2) List down factors that are important to you

Now that you have gotten an idea of each residence, it’s your turn to decide what are your priorities. To get you started, here are some factors you could consider:

• Location: How far should it be from campus? A 5min walk? A Metro? (Imagine the winter time. A 10min walk in the summer could turn into 15min in the winter. Also consider slopes) How close is it from the supermarket or the gym?

• Room type: Single or a double? Or a group house (3-4 people)? How important is having privacy over having company?

• Rent cost: Prices are always Double < Single, Traditional Dorm types < Hotel Dorms. To my surprise, Super large double rooms are still cheaper than single rooms!

• Bathroom type: Normal dorm types have community bathrooms, some of which are shared among both genders. Hotel dorm types have a private bathroom per room (if you get a double, you will be sharing the bathroom with your roomie). Bathrooms include the toilet, sink and shower room (hotel dorm have a bath tub with shower). You might want to ask how comfortable are you with sharing bathrooms as well as if you want the bathroom in your room or out. This is one of the reasons that hotel dorms cost more.

• Access to on-rez cafeteria: Some dorms have a cafeteria just downstairs, but some don’t. For those dorms, you need to go to the dorms which have the cafeteria to have your meal. Though I took this factor lightly, during the winter I was glad to have a cafeteria just few steps away instead of walking through the snow!

• Dorm personalities: Though it might be seen as stereotypical to label each dorm with a personality, it is true that each dorm has a different color. Some dorms are known to be party rez’s in the same way as some are known to be more studious. Some dorms have many scholarship students and some have many music students. When I started living in the dorms, it didn’t seem that black and white, but I could feel a slight different persona for sure. I break down my view on each dorm here: Coming soon

• Other facilities: Do you want a dorm with a small gym? Do you want a place where you could cook? A soccer field nearby? A good view? Starbucks? (Lol C4 represent)

3) Choose your top 3-5 important factors and create a point system

Now that you have listed the factors that are important to you, rank them in order of importance. It is important here to be as honest and realistic as possible. Are you sure you want aesthetics over convenience? Take your time. You can even come back another day for a fresh mind to make the right choices. But then again, don’t stress too much because dorms are merely for a year and no dorm could be utterly miserable if you start living there.

After you ranked them, create a point system. I did this and it helped me a lot. As you can see below, I created my own residence comparison sheet using excel. ( Yes, a non-party rez was very important to me then. I’m not super geeky but I was kind of terrified imagining those party animals I saw in American movies LOL. Still think I made the right choice)

This way, you can clearly see which dorms is more suitable for you through the numbers!

4) Final tweaks

Obviously, some dorms will receive the same total points, just like with mine. So how did I rank them? Now comes the small details. Now you can start considering how old the building is, the pictures and even aesthetics! After all, if the numbers show they score the same, there must not be a huge preference over another so don’t stress over it too much!

Now you are ready to rank them from 1 – 15. Finish it off on Minerva and you are done! Congratulations :) Now it is all up to fate!

Dorm vs Off-Campus

Of course, I personally recommended staying at a dorm as staying in your own apartment could add more stress to your already stressful first year. However, living off campus is definitely a feasible option. This option is common to those who already is from Montreal (and maybe already has a house) or those who just want to start their fully independent university life. I only know what it is like to live in dorms, so I have listed down the pros and cons I felt of living in a dorm after experiencing for a year.

Pros of living in dorms

• You are forced to live with first year students who are in the same exact position as you. This makes it easier to make friends and it is nice to know that you have someone to ask help from! I personally made most of my friends in my dorm and though I was scared at first to have to live with bunch of strangers it really forced me to be social and so I highly recommend this option.

• Floor fellows (upper year students who are your caretakers in dorms) and residence staff are there to help you. Knowing that you have people that have been in Montreal and McGill way longer than you and is one less thing to worry about.

• Useful facilities available in the building. A lot of dorms have a games room, a study room and of course a cafeteria. Not all but some even has a small gym or other sport facilities. I personally liked that there was a room dedicated for studying, because it is nearly impossible for me to study in my room! Having a place dedicated for quiet study in the building was therefore super useful. Some dorms also have “common rooms” which are small rooms where you can just chill with your friends.

• Usually close to campus so no need to commute through bus or metro!

• No need to deal with paying electricity, Wi-Fi, water… it is all included in the price

Cons of living in dorms

• The rent is SUPER high compared to normal apartments you can find! Even apartments near the campus (often referred to as the McGill Ghetto) cost less than $1000 and many apartments in the plateau area (20 min away) cost less than $800. So compared to that, we need to pay a lot LOT more for the dorm experience. This is the biggest pros of living off campus and I can’t stress this enough!

• Even if you get a single room, you still will bump into to strangers everyday. This might be stressful for some people as you need to get used to some casual chit chat and you might want to dress up accordingly (maybe not your pajamas?). In other words, you never really have complete privacy.

• Close to campus, but could be far from grocery store/ shopping areas. This applies especially to Upper Rez as it is located far up the hill close to Mont Royal. From Upper Rez to the nearest Provigo takes a minimum 20 min walk (in the winter probably more).

• If you like cooking, this could be a bummer but you don't have your own kitchen! In C4, we only had a microwave so you were really forced to eat at the cafeteria. Pretty limiting and so if you though you would could practice cooking from your first year, bad news but you kinda have to become a microwave cook....

• If your family lives in Montreal or close by, living in dorms means you need to take time to meet them. Whereas if you were to just commute to campus from your parent's house, you will always be close to your family. Plus, it would not cost extra rent and you don't need to worry for when you suddenly fall sick or run into an emergency.

• You might get stuck in the “McGill bubble”. This term is often used to describe the area around campus (where you don’t hear French much), and the phenomenon of just moving about this area and not much of other parts on Montreal. I was a victim of this in the first few months because everything was convenient that way, but that lead to me not knowing the city at all. So if you are living out of the McGill bubble, you are less prone to fall into that trap.

My Experience

The informative part of the blog is over but I thought I would share a bit of my experience in dorms. Through the lottery, I was assigned to live in Carrefour Sherbrook (C4 for short). This was my 4th choice, and as much as I was sad I didn’t get my first choice Citadelle at the time, looking back I am glad to have gotten C4. One quick reason for that is that C4 has a cafeteria and a Starbucks in the building whereas Citadelle only had a small shop. I had not foreseen how important this became, but let me tell you, having food without leaving the building was GREAT.

My parents had come with my to Montreal to help my transition to university and we stayed in an Airbnb right near the dorm. One thing I recommend which we did was to “move in” before the official moving date. McGill sets a “move in” day for all first year students but the problem you could face with this is that with everyone moving in at the same time, there will be elevator traffic jams and a lot of chaos. So, what you are allowed to do is “move in” earlier, but with a fee. For each day you take to move in that is before the official moving day, you need to pay a fee. So I guess that is the catch. But, another advantage of doing this, is you can pick which side of the room you get if you have a double. I feel like discussing with your roommate is way to do it, but in reality, its FIRST COME FIRST SERVE ;)

So, on my move, so many unbelievable things happened. First, on Minerva it stated I got a double room which I was happy with. I knew that there were bigger rooms called “large double” or even better “super large double” but I heard that those who ask personally with a valid reason can get those rooms, so I was not expecting anything.

But when I went to my room, I was shocked that I had gotten not a double, not a large double, but a SUPER LARGE DOUBLE!!! The format of a super large double is basically a hotel suite turned into 2 rooms. A suite!! If it were a hotel, my side of the room would have had 2 queen beds and the other would have been a salon area. Different from the large double, there were no doors separating the rooms. But thanks to the room’s structure, we had the right amount of openness and privacy. The bathroom was amazing too!

I was so blessed to get this room (and since I came first I got the bigger room ha!) and till this day I have yet to see a bigger room in the whole dorm than mine !! Plus I only payed for a regular double price!

But there was another surprise. Usually when they decide your roommate, it is tradition for the floor fellows to stick both your name and your roommate’s name up on your door. I let McGill decide my roommate so it was absolutely a surprise who I was going to live with, but when I moved in, there was only my name at the door! Asking a floor fellow, they answered,

“Oh, seems like your roommate actually cancelled coming to McGill.”

…..what?

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what to make of getting a room to myself. (Oh my god this huge room all to myself? Yes! Wait but then how am I going to survive the night alone? Or a thunderstorm??)

But a few moments later a girl came into my room. Immediately hugging me, she said,

“Hi nice to meet you. I am excited to be your roommate!”

….what??

I was so confused. Didn’t she cancel??

Turns out that she wasn’t the girl that had cancelled but instead this girl had switched the room from upstairs because it wasn’t the room type she was assigned for!

Honestly my brain could not process all these quick changes then, but that’s how I met my actual roommate! No roommate survey could have decided this outcome!

BEFORE

AFTER

Concluding words of advice

What I would like to say to conclude this blog is that though picking the most suitable dorm is important, you should also remember that like me, unexpected things will happen. You cannot control this, so even if you got the dorm that is not your first choice, or if the dorm turned out to be worse than you thought, it is really up to you to make your first year worthy. Yes, it is easier to make friends in dorms, but if you do not choose to socialize, obviously you are not making the most out of the dorm experience. At the same time, it’s important to keep in mind that a shared living experience means you are prone to face issues as well. Things might not work with your roommate. Or your neighbors. It happens. But don’t let it get to you.

And finally, your first year dorm experience does not decide your whole university life! Even in your first year, there is so much more than your life in residence. So don’t stress too much about it :)

Good luck!

-Mai