Tufts Blogs

First-year students at Tufts live in all-first-year residence halls, and I think there’s something to love about each of them. Living uphill in Carmichael Hall means that you can access Fresh at Carmichael Dining Center — my favorite dining hall at Tufts; I will die on that (literal) hill — without having to step out into the cold, rain, or snow. Metcalf Hall definitely has a great location, right in the center of campus. And Tilton Hall’s single-stall all-gender bathrooms are actually beautiful. While first-year residence halls at Tufts are, for the most part, randomly assigned rather than chosen, they each have their own perks.

This past year, I lived in Houston Hall (pronounced like the city in Texas, not like the street in Manhattan). Houston is off of the Residential Quad, adjacent to the Academic Quad in the uphill part of campus. Although this quad is surrounded by residence halls, the name actually references the Boston-area water reservoir formerly located there — referred to by students as “The Rez” back in the day — until the land was sold to Tufts in 1944. The Res Quad is essentially the uphill residential cluster for first years, encompassing about half of our major first-year residence halls, with the rest of them clustered downhill. For the 2025-26 school year, 4 residence halls surrounding the Res Quad — Houston, Miller, Carmichael, and Wren — will house first-year students. Even if you don’t live uphill, you will almost certainly meet people who live there and hang out in those buildings!

Houston and Miller Halls are near mirror images of each other, across from each other on the Res Quad. They were both renovated together in 2019, with beautiful glass facades and new common spaces. The open study lounges, lit with plenty of natural light, and the rooms facing the Res Quad, like mine, give views of the student activities and hangouts often taking place there (think intramural volleyball games, Holi celebrations, and guitar playing). Rooms facing outwards — especially on the higher floors — enjoy sweeping bird’s-eye views of the surrounding areas, which is one of the fun perks of being up on the hill.

The location of Houston was a big plus for me. I loved its spot on the Res Quad with so many other first-years all around me. I had a bunch of friends just across the quad in Miller as well, which kind of became a second home, and I enjoyed having them just steps away. While downhill residents enjoy particularly easy access to the Mayer Campus Center, the Granoff Music and Aidekman Arts Centers, grab-and-go food from Hodgdon Food-on-the-Run, and the stops for our shuttles to Davis Square in Somerville and our School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, my location in Houston allowed me to reach the Academic Quad sans hill climbing, putting me especially close to some of my classes in the Olin Center for Language and Cultural Studies, Barnum Hall, and Lane Hall. I was also right next door to the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, one of our graduate schools, but only in the spring semester did I find my love for their Ginn Library, whose reading room is now one of my favorite spots on campus. While the Tufts campus as a whole is very walkable, and you’re never more than about a 10 minute walk from anywhere you might want to go on campus, laziness sometimes gets the best of all of us, so it was nice to be able to roll out of bed right into my French class from time to time.

Houston is on the larger side as far as residence halls go at Tufts, but I still felt like there was a good community in the building with many friendly, recognizable faces, even though I didn’t know everyone in my building. Occasionally I would meet someone elsewhere on campus, only to later learn that they also live in Houston, which always amused me.

While all first years are on a full meal plan at Tufts, all the first-year residence halls have communal kitchens in their lobbies, which often become very active gathering spaces. Around the kitchen island in Houston (and the identical one across the quad in Miller), strangers became acquaintances and acquaintances became friends. The kitchen island was also a surprisingly productive spot for me to bang out essays, sometimes a bit too late into the night. I never really cooked during my first year — unless you count cutting up a whole pineapple with only a butterknife for a friend’s cheese/fruit/charcuterie birthday spread (a feat I was extremely proud of) — but my roommate was always baking, with plenty to share with anyone passing by in the lobby. There was always something happening there.

Houston, like many first-year residence halls, is mostly doubles, and I loved mine. It was, admittedly, an especially large room in the building, which left ample space for a big homey rug (which my roommate found for free at the annual Back to School Reuse Sale). All the rooms in Houston and Miller, and many others across campus, have large built-in closet and drawer units, so storage was very ample. My first-floor window facing the sidewalk and the quad lent itself very well to friend spottings and impromptu conversations.

It’s probably pretty clear that I loved my first-year living, and I’m definitely gonna miss it going into my sophomore year! A lot of students leave their first year with tons of cherished memories from their residence halls and those of their friends as well, and I really enjoyed the feeling of community in the first-year residence halls this past year. So definitely relish those moments and embrace the shared, collective transition into college, through all of the joy and chaos.