Is Balch Hall the best dorm at Cornell?

NO NO NO NO NO Have you ever been horrified by giant mutant bugs? WELL LOOK NO FURTHER! Balch is SOOOO the dorm for you. The bugs were awful and I knew a girl who found a rat in her room. Also, the dingy lighting makes the building reminiscent of the shining. The furniture is ANCIENT, and I’m 90% sure people have definitely used some of the couches for uh some smashing times. So so so unclean. And then let’s talk about room sizes. I lived in one of the worst doubles. So so so tiny. It was a forced double, right? With Balch, there is no size equity and in the summer, top floor folks SUFFER! You melt in your decrepit room where the carpets have NEVER been cleaned. I got so ill from the dust that I needed an inhaler and ended up DIY steaming the carpet. No joke- it turned a different color. The sink rooms are pretty hit or miss but no. Do not live here because these amenities are so unfair. If you want a single though, this is the place. And if you like horror films, visit the elevator- it was horrifying. The laundry hall is a site of tension and fighting, if the machine doesn’t destroy your clothes of course, and the pretentious fancy air conditioned lounge, the only comfortable lounge (because it is actually cleaned) is constantly occupied to a point where people put their books on chairs and try to avoid interacting with one another. And because of the arch, you’ll always hear singing but to be honest, that was the best part about living there compared to the silence.

There were ants on my 6th room floor... how did they get up there? Really spacious rooms, possibly the largest singles you have on north campus. Location is really convenient to get to central campus/the bus. The elevator is jank as hell though and so is the building overall. It's an old building so don't expect too much insulation either, I had to use a portable heater to survive winter. No A/C.

Pros: - great location! not too bad of a walk to class or to nasties. also there's a bus stop literally right outside of balch and buses come around every 15 minutes - everyone was pretty nice in my unit - weekly snacks from the RAs - the rooms are huge (if you're not in a forced triple like i was) - kitchens for every unit - Carol's Cafe!! loved being able to walk downstairs in my PJs to get coffee during finals week - heating was so good during the winter Cons: - every time you shower you gotta kill a few bugs + hair everywhere in the showers - i'm serious i got so fed up w my unit's bathroom that i went across the hall to the other unit to shower. i found out that the girls in that unit went /downstairs/ to shower bc they couldn't stand their own bathroom. - walls are super thin - we had a sink in our room and it gave off this weird fish smell??? one of my friends lived in the same room after me and told me that bugs started showing up inside the sink so - no good place to study :((( - on any given day, almost half of the laundry machines were broken - ngl the elevator terrified me and didn't work half the time bc people forgot to close the door when they left

Pros: very nice location - located near two bus stops so very convenient. also located next to louie's food truck (perfect for grabbing a midnight snack) BIG rooms! very spacious! (the first floor rooms are MUCH smaller than the upper floors) sink rooms (there are no sink rooms on the ground floor tho) quiet - good for studying right on top of Carol's cafe cons: no AC quiet - err no social life bathrooms can get quite nasty / smelly walls are super thin and the hallways are quite echo-y (no bueno if you're gonna be ~frisky~) lots of bugs - have fun getting used to killing them sometimes can get depressing some girls can actually be really disgusting - in my year, someone left a bag full of pee in the kitchen trash friends said that the hallways reminded them of a hallway in a horror movie (The Shining) kitchens are also outdated / quite dirty

If you want a triple, Balch is the place for you. My room was insanely huge with so much closet space that we had a decent amount of empty space. The bathrooms are horrible which less of a maintenance problem and more of a people problem; people are just nasty. I loved the fact that Balch is so close to two bus stops, really made life easier in the morning. I had a few classes in the Tatkon Center which was very convenient because I could go to class in flip flops and never be late. Also, some of the washers don't charge you for loads sometimes it's amazing when that happens!