Hi Everyone,

As you may have heard, we miscalculated the number of female rooms needed on West Campus for Fall 2008. We were 58 beds short. So far, we have done the following to address this:

• Released several of our “hold” spaces. While we can usually be liberal with how many rooms we keep on hold for emergencies (broken legs from skiing, etc.), this year we will be very lean. Don’t worry - we will still be able to work with students who have unexpected changes in their housing needs.
• Relocated three pairs of men from two floors in Craven. This allowed us to swap these two floors from male to female, opened up 18 beds, and created some options for blocking.
• Offered rising junior and senior women who selected singles the option to move to Central. ~10 women took advantage of this.

The next step we are taking is to relax the requirement that all sophomores live on West Campus. We are offering the option to request to move to Central Campus to the rising sophomore women who selected rooms on West Campus. We expect to allow ~24 women to take advantage of this offer, given the following conditions are met:

• Students must move as pairs, leaving an empty room on West Campus.
• Blocks may adjust roommate pairs if some members want to relocate to Central but others want to stay on West.
• Students interested in 4-person apartments must move as groups of four or be willing to be placed randomly with another pair of sophomores.

Additional incentives:

• $750 per semester reduction in applicable rate for re-assigned space ($1500 for 2008-2009 academic year).
• Women moving to Central Campus will be given the opportunity to be re-assigned to the newly renovated Few Quad for the spring semester. (RLHS will assist with your move.)
• Central Campus apartments are air-conditioned.
• Rent on Central Campus is $1,580 to $3510 less than rent on West Campus (depending on assignment).
• The cost of the required meal plan is about $460 less for Central Campus than the minimum plan required for West Campus residents.
• Apartment living typically affords greater privacy and a more independent lifestyle than does living in a residence hall.

Please contact us if you have any questions!

Thank you to everyone who participated in Room Pix ‘08 for rising juniors and rising seniors. Both the online singles process and the in-person apartment process went very smoothly. We appreciate all of your patience and cooperation!

There are still apartments of various sizes available on Central Campus. If you didn’t get a lottery number, but have since paired up with a roommate, email us and we’ll stay in touch with you about available apartments. Check the room/apartment locator to see what is still available.

Remember, if you haven’t completed the on-campus living requirement, you are required to live on-campus next year. Better to choose your own assignment than for us to have to choose it for you!

This applies to rising sophomores who will be selecting their rooms online Saturday and Sunday.

Well, it’s our first year doing online picks, and during single room selection, we realized something that could make a difference for you as you try to select your room.

The Room/Apartment Locator shows a list of rooms that have not been selected yet. Rooms that are “locked” by someone in the online system have not yet been officially selected, so, while they will not show in the online system, they will still show up in the Room/Apartment Locator.

What this means for you: when you do a search in the online system to select your room, it is only going to show rooms that someone else hasn’t locked. The rooms that are locked will likely, but not definitely, be picked by the people who have locked them. So, in theory, you could be hoping for a room in Keohane, but not see any when you enter the system because they are all being locked by other students who are considering selecting them. A few minutes later, there could be a room in Keohane available in the system because someone decided not to select it and released their lock on it.

We recommend keeping an eye on the Room/Apartment Locator prior to, and even during, your selection window. Remember, the idea behind Room Pix is to select the best option available to you at the time. So, you can choose to just select from what you see when you log into the system, or you can wait a few minutes and hope someone unlocks a room you’d prefer. Our recommendation is to go with what you know is available over what you hope might be available.

Good Luck!

This applies only to rising sophomores!

As our previous posts noted, the number of beds available on West is equal to the number of rising sophomores who need to select space on West. However, the number of students who want doubles exceeds the number of doubles available, so some rising sophomores will need to select triple rooms.

We are going to keep triple room selection off-line. If you and your friends decide to triple, you will each need to email us with your name and Unique ID, and the names and Unique IDs of your roommates. You’ll need to list your room preferences in order. You can see what’s still available on the room/apartment locator. Once we hear from all three of you, we will assign you. Assignments will be done first come, first served, as we hear from all members of the group.

You can choose to triple up now, or you can wait and see how fast the double rooms are being selected before making your decision. We will accept requests for triples at least through the end of Room Pix, pending availability. We’ll keep you updated as we evaluate the situation!

Well, single room pix went pretty smoothly last night. A few students encountered technical problems, but the vast majority were able to navigate the process successfully. We are working closely with those who experienced challenges.

Students who did not select a room have the following options:

1) Pair up and enter the apartment lottery. To do this, you and your roommate should email us. We will place you in the lottery together. You may also join an existing block, if it has less than 12 people in it. If you do not have a roommate, visit the roommate finder - we recommend you post your information, in addition to reviewing the information of others.

If you enter the apartment lottery as a pair (and do not join an existing block) you will be given a fresh lottery number - your singles lottery number will be unrelated to your lottery number for an apartment.

2) Do nothing. If you are a rising senior, we will assume you have elected to live off-campus. If you are a rising junior, you will be contacted over the summer for your preferences, and we will place you in an available space late in the summer.

Women have an additional option. The online system closed last night as planned, but there were still nine single rooms left. We’ll take the plame for this - we did not expect there to still be rooms available at that late time, so the system was set to turn off at the end of the last session. We apologize for this, but we are offering the following:

• If you are interested in one of these rooms, please email us by 8am Monday March 24. Available rooms are listed on the Room/Apartment Locator. Rank the available rooms in the order you prefer them. We will take any responses we receive, put them in lottery number order, and place as many students as possible. We will email results of this process late Monday.

We thank everyone for your patience and cooperation last night and as we finish off this process!

Lottery numbers were emailed today at 4pm. There are separate lottery numbers for each of the groups below.
How to interpret your lottery number:

Singles:

Lottery groups have ~10 people of each gender in them. So if you are in lottery group 12, then ~110 people will be eligible to select prior to when your window opens.

Lottery groups for singles range from 1 to 17.

Triples:

Each person has a number, so 1-3 are a room’s worth of people, 4-6, etc. There is a set of numbers for men and another for women. Numbers end in “T-M” or T-F.”

Lottery numbers for triples range from 1-18 for women and 1-12 for males.

Apartments:

Numbers begin with 1 (and will have an “A” the end). Each person has a number. Numbers are not separated by gender (thanks to co-ed blocking). We’ll post on the selection schedule how many men and women are in each session to give you a sense of how many people of your gender are picking ahead of you.

Lottery numbers for apartments run from 1A to 903A.

Doubles on West:

Lottery groups begin with 1001. There are ~12 people of each gender in most groups. Because of coed blocking there are a few groups that only have ~12 women in them, and no men. This was necessary in order to keep coed blocks in the same selection session. It won’t hurt anyone’s outcome.

Lottery groups for doubles range from 1001 to 1062.

Let us know if you have any questions!

The intent of the room/apartment locator is two-fold:

• To allow you to get a general sense of what rooms will be available
• To allow you to plan and rank which rooms you are interested in as your selection session approaches.

We recommend you visit the locator well in advance of your selection session and research what is available. A day or so before your session, create a list (from what is still available) of rooms you are interested in. Rank the list in your order of preference. Then, shortly before your selection window, go onto the locator and cross off from your list rooms that no longer appear as available. This way, you’ll be prepared to enter your selection session and pick a room quickly.

Some things to keep in mind as you review available rooms:

• Size isn’t everything. Just because a room has a lot of square feet doesn’t mean it is the best option for you. Look at the floor plans that are posted online and review the footprint of the room, if there are dormer (slanted) ceilings (denoted with dotted lines). Is the room near a bathroom, a stairwell, a selective living group, etc.
• Decide ahead of time with your roommate and/or blockmates if your priority is to live near each other or in your preferred location. This will help you select quickly during your session.

Visit the locator here.

Below are some very preliminary application statistics. This data is pretty raw - we still have a lot of clean-up to do, but we wanted to give you a rough look at where things stand.

Some important points about interpreting this data:

• We are still receiving applications and corrections that will change these numbers up until the start of Room Pix. We wish things were more definite, but this process is very fluid. We try to stay flexible for as long as possible!
• Rising seniors may request housing and then decline to select it at Room Pix. There is no way to accurately predict how many people will do this, but it works out in the favor of the rising juniors.
• There are more triples available than there are students requesting them. This means that rising sophomores hoping for doubles may end up in triples. We are encouraging rising sophomores to consider tripling up in advance. Take a look at the roommate finder to see who still needs a roommate!
• There are still many students who are required to live on-campus who have not submitted applications, so the number of applications listed below is not going to add up perfectly to the number of bedspaces available. It never does!

Singles:

• Female applications received: ~85 rising seniors, ~75 rising juniors (~125 rooms available)
• Male applications received: ~73 rising seniors, ~60 rising juniors (~88 rooms available)

Doubles:

• Female applications received: ~660 rising sophomores (~300 rooms available)
• Male applications received: ~500 rising sophomores (~220 rooms available)

Triples:

• Female applications received: ~21 people (~20 rooms available)
• Male applications received: ~12 people (~20 rooms available)

Apartments:

• Female applications received: ~174 rising seniors, ~265 rising juniors
• Male applications received: ~171 rising seniors, ~283 rising juniors

(see blog Room/Apt Locator blog 2/19/08 for apartment availability by size)

As always, please contact us if you have any questions. Have a great Spring Break!

We’ve been getting the question “What if I don’t get a single on West?” a lot.

Based on projections from previous years, and adding in the impact of Few being closed for Fall 2008, we anticipate that demand for singles will exceed supply. It is very likely that rising juniors applying for singles will need to pair up to select apartments on Central Campus. We recommend students find someone to pair up with now, wait for your lottery numbers, and then agree not to pick a single if it looks like both won’t be able to get singles.

When single room selection finishes on March 20, we will contact those students who applied for singles but did not select one. You will need to let us know your planned apartment-mate, and we’ll place you in the apartment lottery. You’ll be able to form blocks or to join existing blocks. Block limits will still be set at 12, and blocks will still need to have even numbers of students in them. Placement in the lottery will still be random - trying for a single won’t hurt you or help you in the apartment lottery process.

If you don’t pair up prior to March 26 when we start apartment selection, you can still pair up by contacting Housing Assignments.
If you don’t pair up prior to the end of Room Pix, you will be contacted over the summer for your assignment preferences and placed in a space in the late summer.

We’re still working on updating room information so that the Room/Apartment locator will be as accurate as possible when it goes live. Until then, here’s some approximate numbers of rooms/apartments (not bedspaces) of what will be available to unaffiliated students during Room Pix ‘08:

Females:

Central Campus:

• 3-bedrooms (4-person) apartments: ~45
• 2-bedroom full (2-person) apartments: ~35
• 2-bedroom suite (2-person) apartments: ~47
• 1-bedroom (2 person) apartments: ~120
• Studio (2-person) apartments: ~14

West Campus:

• Triples: ~20
• Doubles: ~300
• Singles: ~125

Males:

Central Campus:

• 3-bedrooms (4-person) apartments: ~45
• 2-bedroom full (2-person) apartments: ~35
• 2-bedroom suite (2-person) apartments: ~47
• 1-bedroom (2 person) apartments: ~120
• Studio (2-person) apartments: ~14

West Campus:

• Triples: ~20
• Doubles: ~220*
• Singles: ~88*

* Remember, there are more men in SLG’s than women, so the gender distribution of available rooms takes this into account!

Let us know if you have any questions! We’ll get the locator up in the next few days.