Just wondering when housing for next year has to be decided? How easy is it for a first year (2018) to get their choice for 2019 for on campus housing? Or, when do off-campus apartments start the lease process for next school year? Seems early to ask as they aren’t even to week 5, but my other DD at UMN is already discussing this with her roomies.
That makes me worry a bit about the housing at UMN! Just kidding. (S19 was just accepted but if he ends up there will probably do honors housing in Middlebrook . . . ).
Interestingly my D at UChicago started discussing this topic with her pals well before the end of last year. I think once you get a friend group the prospect of moving off campus eventually sounds pretty exciting. She definitely planned to - and did - return to her house in BJ for second year.
Housing lottery is held in the spring and the kids go all over picking out what rooms to bid on. Here is the link to how it works (scroll down to Room Selection): https://housing.uchicago.edu/current-residents/assignments/
Pretty sure upper div. gets priority over the rising 2nd years. Current house residents get priority over incoming; same for res. halls. Top of the food chain would be returning to your current house - that’s supposed to be a guarantee as long as you are living on campus during spring quarter.
My daughter selected a room that she really loved and that nobody else really wanted. That’s one strategy for figuring out where to room. I think every
^ Regarding moving off-campus, Leases would probably run July - June or Aug - July. You should check the various apartments in the areas to confirm. However, your daughter would most likely want to return to the res. halls for 2nd year. One of the major reasons why they’ve been in a housing crunch the past couple years is that housing lottery happens after the May 1 decision day and they’ve had a higher-than-expected number returning to the dorms. Plus, if she’s in the dorms she might get an invite to move to Vue53 in order to make room for the next huge class of 1st years, so there’s probably going to be an option to move off campus anyway but not have to worry about a full-year lease 
My experience may be out of date, in part because I think the rental market in Hyde Park may have tightened, and in part because my kids never rented from MAC, which seems to have expanded its stranglehold on local properties in the past decade.
Anyway, they put their off-campus housing arrangements in place in early-mid February. In both cases, rather than looking for an empty apartment with classmates, their first move off campus (as 2nd years) was to fill in an empty room in an apartment to which upperclass students were returning. Kid #1 shared an apartment with 2 third-years, one of whom was a friend going back to middle school, and one fourth-year, and Kid #2 shared an apartment with two third-years, one of whom was a good friend of Kid #1. This was completely satisfactory, by the way – it worked fine, and expanded their social circles in a nice way. Kid #1 and her old friend then found a different, great apartment for the next year, which they “inherited” from graduating fourth-years. Her best friend moved in to share it with her for their fourth year, and then they passed it to Kid #2 and one of his friends for the next two years. Kid #2 and his second-year roommates passed their apartment to an ex-girlfriend of Kid #2 and her friends.
Note: Social networking was important in finding good apartments, not looking at ads or talking to landlords.
I can’t remember whether the leases went June-May or July-June. I think the former, although it was easy to negotiate holdovers for graduating students.
There was an active sublet market, but during the summer you would be lucky to get 70% of your monthly rent for a sublet. My kids both used their apartments during the summer, however.
I was definitely on the lease for the nice apartment for four years. What a great apartment that was!
@mwmomtwins Here’s a link from this past spring which shows the flow of the housing selection for upperclassmen. https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/e/505/files/2018/01/Lottery-Important-Dates-1718-1ecy38r.pdf
My DD is in her third year in the dorms, and she has gotten the room she wanted for both lotteries. She’s just one data point though.
This might be obvious, but the difficulty of getting the room you want in the housing lottery is largely determined by how likely upperclassmen are to stay in housing since rooms are picked by seniority. E.g. in BJ, where the average student stays in housing for ~2.5 years, getting the room you want is harder than in, say, North.
@JBStillFlying it might be worth it for the honors aspect but Middlebrook is pretty run down and cramped (I lived there briefly and it’s not nearly as nice as any of the Chicago dorms)