Well I will tell you my experience from the Ohio State University as a freshman living in the honors dorms.
And this is gonna be a long post for sure...
At first I was really worried to be honest because I had this notion that the honors dorms would be a bunch of geeks who didn't drink, didn't party, and played Magic the gathering all day long along with Chess. Well i was surprised when the first night I moved in I went with some people on my floor to a frat party and found out decently quick that a few people on my floor partied. Also it is very easy to meet people on the floor as long as you leave your door open and walk around looking for those open doors yourself. So i began to meet my whole floor and found some people I liked to hang out with and everything and for about a month or two I was really happy just chilling with my floor. But then I got into some clubs here at OSU and quickly found out what college was really like. While yes, my dorm drank and partied a bit, it was still an honors dorm and I've never considered myself the stereotype honors kid. (Ie my weekend starts on Thursday and sometimes Wednesday) so as I meet people from the clubs I joined I made friends with people in non-honors dorms and realized that they are some fun dorms, they will have floor keggers and make slip-n-slides down the hall . My dorm, most people who drank I didn't even know about until maybe a month ago (and remember I've lived with these people since last September), so I've kinda been labeled as the floors drinker on the guys side. (seeing as I will sometimes come back hammered (well more often than not I will come back hammered) SO that is the dorm on a hole, at least it has been my experience that the honors dorm somewhat lived up to my fears about it. Not to many people party hard, yes people will play videogames all day instead of going outside and playing around, and I've only seen one Magic game being played and no chess yet. Although Risk has been played for whole nights.
But my RA is also pretty cool and we had a rootbeer pong tournament earlier this year and I'll occasionally go to the bars with him (he's kinda a creeper), so with a cool RA many things can be opened up and the dorms can be more crazy.
One nice thing about the honors dorm is that wel, they are honors kids, so they study a good amount which means when I have to get stuff done I can.
Now for the actual roommate thing. i can't stress it enough, be honest on your application. I was pretty honest and while me and my roommate are not the best friends ,we get along well enough, respect each other and have a good living arrangement, but I don't plan on seeing him after this year unless it is randomly at a party or something. I live in a double and it is actually a good amount of space. I think a quad would be hard because someone else would always be in your room and you could never just chill and have any privacy. What ever you do make sure you set some boundaries with your roommate though because they do help like a cleaning schedule or something like that or a stipulation that they shower at a minimum every other day (I"m not kidding, I've smelled some rank people here at school and thankfully my roommate does shower often), also some boundries on girls sleeping over can be helpful too, I got a fun little surprise early on in the year when my roommate had his GF (who lives on our floor By the way) stay over for the first night. it wasn't anything weird and I rally don't care but it was kinda awkward waking up to a third person in the room without knowing before hand. and def use a text system whenever you are using the room for something that your roommate doesn't need to be there for. It's works great for me and my roommate and I haven't had to walk into them in any awkward situations and vise versa.
For the general experience though I can't stress joining a club enough. Going to the nations largest university I was kinda worried that I wouldn't find anyone who held the same ideals or interests that I do (my roommate skis but he is a racer so we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of skiing things). So after that first month of school I finally found some clubs that I wanted to join and eventually settled on one club to get really involved with because the people in it are great people. are like me in many respects and we throw some awesome parties. That is the reason I kinda became known as the partier on the guys side of the floor, because I made friends outside of the dorm though the club I gained access to a lot more opportunities to get outside of the dorm and meet new people/ hang out. Which led to me finding my future house mates and also kind of ostracizing myself from my roommate and his group of friends who all live in my dorm. the difference really is where we party. He will just get trashed in the dorms most weeks while I will go party hoping or just go to one specific party or house and just chill.
So overall the dorms are a great foundation to meet people initially but be willing to look outside your dorm and get active in some clubs that interest you, that is the key to college, get involved and don't just go through school as some number but find something to identify yourself with, whether it be a sports club, fraternity, social club, or just a club that is known for their partying shenanigans. Get involved
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Spark Notes - there are none, take 5-10 min and read the above and get my first hand experience living in the dorms as my freshman year of college finally comes to a close...(f'in quarter system, even though I was happy for the month long winter break)
