Working the angles @Furnald

Working the angles @Furnald

Location: 2940 Broadway (115 Street)

Nearby dorms: Carman, Schapiro, the LLC, and John Jay

Stores and restaurants: Ferris, Morton Williams, Starbucks, M2M, sweetgreen, Vine, Bernheim & Schwartz

Cost: $7,928/year for freshmen, $8,166/year for non-freshmen (cheapest tier: same price as Broadway, McBain, Schapiro, and Wien)

Amenities:

  • Bathrooms: From the third to tenth floor, there are separate men’s and women’s bathrooms that are cleaned every weekday. The floor bathrooms each have three showers, three toilets, and five sinks. The first floor has an ADA bathroom and those on the first and second floor are co-ed.
  • AC/Heating: Yes, although it has failed at inconvenient times.
  • Kitchen/Lounge: The floor lounges are nice and roomy, with a seating area (four armchairs and a coffee table), cable TV, a large kitchen table with chairs, and a decent kitchen. The kitchen area has two microwaves, an oven, and two stovetops, along with granite countertops. There is a main lounge/lobby on the first floor that looks very warm and inviting.
  • Laundry: Laundry room in the basement with six washers and six dryers.
  • Computers/Printers: A small computer lab on the first floor with three computers and one printer.
  • Intra-transportation: Two pretty slow elevators, one on the north side and one on the south side.
  • Hardwood/carpet: Hardwood floors in rooms, carpeting in some of the hallway.
  • Wifi: Yes
  • Bonus: Queer lounge and bike storage (!!) in basement

Room Variety:

  • Singles: There are plentiful singles—190 in total. None are inhumanely small, with the smallest being 104 square feet and the largest an impressive 130 square feet.
  • Doubles: There are 28 doubles, which can be enormous (around 275 square feet), or almost-but-not-quite miserable (around 175 square feet).

Numbers:

  • The cuff-off tends to be low for singles. Last year’s last single went to a rising sophomore with the lottery number 10/755. In 2014, the number was lower at 10/505. The cut-off might fluctuate, but it will definitely be under 10/1000.
  • Doubles also tend to be attractive to sophomore groups doing in-person selection, and go quickly. Last year, the cut-off was 10/940, and the year before it was 10/666.

Bwog Recommendations:

  • Furnald might have an anti-social reputation, but the reputation far exceeds the reality. If you want a quiet space of your own at night and don’t need to make friends on your floor, it’s a great option for rising sophomores.
  • East-facing rooms on higher floors have beautiful views of South Lawn, along with Butler and College Walk.
  • All dorms might be getting lounge air conditioning this upcoming year, but in-room AC is still a huge perk during the first month of school.
  • The tenth floor is the smallest, and has the cleanest bathrooms, which residents of other floors sometimes patronize. The room ceilings are dizzyingly high.
  • The kitchen and its amenities can be incredibly convenient, particularly for those not on a meal plan. The lounges are well-designed and inviting, or at least more so than Carman’s.

Resident Opinions:

  • “It’s close to Ferris, which is all that matters in the winter.”
  • “My floor is really quiet but some of the others are fairly social, so it can go either way. Even when it is quiet, it’s still easy to make friends and most people in the building seem to know each other.”
  • “I really love Furnald: it’s clean, has great facilities, and is quiet but can still be very fun. My floor has definitely bonded a lot.”
  • “Having a single makes up for any deficits Furnald might have, like the slow elevators and my neighbor’s weed habit.”
  • “The bathrooms always seem eerily empty. Like, I’ve never showered at the same time as another person no matter what time of the day I do it, which is nice, but odd.”