Dorming is something that definitely shapes a college experience. When else are you sharing your bedroom, kitchen, living room and closet areas with two or three other people that you may not have even known beforehand? Students at UCLA who choose to reside in the dorms live on the “Hill,” where all the dorm residential buildings and all-you-can-eat dining halls are located. The Hill offers four different types of general housing options: classics, deluxes, plazas and suites, all of which can be found in double or triple roommate options.
Most people on the Hill tend to be in triples, where the room will have one bunk bed and one lofted bed with a desk underneath the lofted bed. Doubles will have two stand-alone beds whose heights can be adjusted depending on how much storage space someone wants underneath.
Classic dorms at UCLA can be found at Dykstra Hall, Sproul Hall, Rieber Hall and Hedrick Hall. These rooms have the least amount of square footage but are also the cheapest option on the Hill. This dorm option tends to be the most social due to the communal floor bathrooms that require leaving the room to use. These dorms do lack an air conditioning unit, so having a fan during the summer months is very common. Their study lounges are also frequently populated, and you’re very likely to run into and get to know the people on your floor very well.
Deluxe dorms at UCLA can be found at Sproul Cove, Sproul Landing, De Neve Holly, De Neve Gardenia, Olympic and Centenniel. Like classics, they have communal bathrooms, but the rooms themselves are larger and have air conditioning. Olympic and Centenniel are also the newest buildings on the Hill, making the rooms and facilities the most modern. Their names come from the fact that UCLA dorms will be used to house Olympic athletes for the 2028 Olympics held in Los Angeles.
Plazas can be found in De Neve Plaza, Sunset Village, Rieber Vista, Rieber Terrace and Hedrick Summit. Plazas may be roughly the same size as deluxes, but they include more storage space. They also have attached bathrooms which can either be shared with one other room or private to your room. If shared, the bathroom will include two sinks, separate closed shower and a separate closed toilet. Private bathrooms have all of these in the same room. Like deluxes, plazas come with air conditioning as well, but they tend to be on the less social side due to the lack of communal bathrooms.
The final housing option on the Hill are suites. Suites can be found at Saxon and Hitch and almost mimic apartment-style living but without a kitchen. Suites have two bedrooms, two sinks, a separate shower room and a separate toilet area, but the real difference is the living room area they come with. This provides a lot more storage space and even comes with a table and sofa in the room itself.
I will say that besides all these there are very few single rooms on the Hill, which can be found in various plaza buildings. These singles come in pods of 5 that share a bathroom, where each room has a bed, closet and desk. They also have their own little common space. These rooms tend to mostly be reserved for students with accommodations, which means getting the singles involves extra steps at times, but they do exist!
Hopefully, these explanations help break down the complexities of each room a little bit more. With so many options, it’s sometimes hard to choose and dissect the differences between each living style. But with all that said, no matter what type of room you choose or end up in, you will be able to make your dorming and overall UCLA experience whatever you want it to be.