My son is in the process of deciding between UM and Cornell. He’s done the admitted student day at UM and will do one at Cornell in two weeks. He doesn’t want to commit to a school until he’s done the day at Cornell so he can get a better feel for that campus than he had on the basic tour. However, because the admitted student day at Cornell is so late, it means he’s doing to be sending in his deposit to whichever school very close to that May 1 deadline.
How will this affect his housing at UM if he goes to UM? Is priority for housing choices done by the date of the enrollment deposit? He loved The Hill when we visited, but if priority is by the enrollment deadline, my assumption is that this would put him on North Campus.
There is no priority for sending it early. I will be honest here and tell you that about 60 percent of the kids my daughter knows ( a small sample to be sure, but still) who are on Central or The Hill did it by either I) signing up for an LLC (a legitimate way to do it) or 2) ( and this is not really legit for many) having some kind of medical/or religious reason that they couldn’t be on North and submitting a doctors note (e.g. asthma or allergies so needs air conditioning in room, some reason that bus transportation won’t work: motion sickness, gatro-intentinal issues etc…) or Rabbi’s note (religious Jews don’t use transportation on Friday night thru Saturday and you can’t walk to religious services from North).
My daughter’s roommate had a medical excuse that got her off North. I had no idea how prevelant this was until my daughter started asking people she knew how they ended up on Central/Hill.
@MountainGirl It won’t make a difference. Students don’t get to prioritize the location of their housing. They can only say if they want a double, single, suite, single-sex, etc. They don’t get to say that they want the Hill or West Quad or anywhere else.
@maya54 - He figured he was more likely to be off North if he chose an LLC, but from reading the descriptions, he wasn’t interested in any of them. Bummer, that!
@brantly - When we did the admitted students day, the tour guide said that the freshmen would rank location on the housing form (noting preferences for North, Central, or Hill…but not by specific dorm), which is why I wondered about priority.
I think you do get to express a preference but I’m not sure. In any event it doesn’t seem to be honored all that often. It would be fascinating to know which dorms kids would choose to live in if given an actual choice. I know that only a very tiny minority would choose the North Campus dorms. But I wonder what would happen if they said to students “ok you are not on North what dorm do you want?” What dorms would be way oversubscribed, what dorms way under? I think some people here would be surprised about how many kids choose the rather disgusting Markley over the much nicer “Quad” dorms.
I filled out my housing application on Tuesday & the question asked is something like ‘what preference is North Campus?’ with 2nd & 1st as the options.
You definitely get to rank which “region” of campus you would like to live on: Hill, North, Central. How much weight that ranking has on what you actually get? Beats me.