<p>In looking at the housing sections of many college websites I notice that it talks of housing lotteries.</p>
<p>Is this pretty common among colleges and universities ? Does any one type of school have this more than others ? Any Pro's or Con's to this system ?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>We had an issue with a lottery system for this year's housing. Fortunately, I have a very flexible son. Apparently the school allows a group of kids get a block of rooms at once. My son was a part of that group. They use the lowest lottery number. In this case it was a girl with the lowest number. Apparently, all people do not need to be present. My son did not show up because he had a small thing called class during the time that the group went to residence life. The person they saw did not follow the rules as my son understood them, and did not assign a room to my son because he is a male. The floor that they were going to live on is coed and apparently groups can be coed when choosing room assignments. This way students are living with their friends on the same floor. Well it resulted in my son having to settle. Over the summer something in the dorm he wanted opened up, but they originally placed him in a dorm where he knew next to nobody.</p>
<p>Jeepers, I think it's pretty much universal. How else do you allocate a vast number of available rooms with different configurations and different locations when there is close to 100% turnover at the room level annually (and probably close to 50% turnover in the system annually)?</p>
<p>In some systems, kids have the right to stay in their current room. At places like Harvard, Yale, Rice, with residential colleges, there may be separate lotteries within each residential college. But everyone has some kind of lottery to decide who gets to pick the most desirable rooms first.</p>
<p>My S's college used the lottery system as a way to try to make things as fair as possible. Freshmen are scattered throughout campus at this college, intermingled with the upperclassmen, and starting with sophomore year they go into a lottery system. The class is divided into thirds, and for each of the three years your "third" of the grade alternates choosing in the first, second or third position within the class. Of course, rising seniors choose rooms first, then rising juniors, then rising sophs. Sophs clearly become "low men" on the totem pole since they choose last. There are many more quirks to this system, including a type of room blocking which permits small groups of friends to live near each other. This was a small college, and I can't imagine how well this would work at a large university.</p>
<p>Some schools I think have lottery systems based on gpa, year, and I know of one that also uses points (ie: for community service, campus involvement, and I think gpa enters into the mix).</p>
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including a type of room blocking which permits small groups of friends to live near each other.
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<p>This is the kind of thing that my son has at his large school. I guess it works, but it did not for him because a female was trying to reserve his room and they would not let her do so. Apparently, she should have been able to do that. This problem cost my son some headaches.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the input. Some websites are really clear in how it works at that given school others haven't mentioned it at all. I can see where it could be a good thing or possibly a headache.</p>
<p>my son's lottery for next year is going to be interesting.
He's not putting any requested roommates on his lottery card.
Sophomores (what he will be in fall) get first priority to pick. But the real interesting part is that at NYU there are so many different prices of rooms and they are really spread out. I'm PRAYING that he gets a low cost housing. and that it costs less than 11K (and that doesn't include the food)</p>
<p>More ramen for me!</p>
<p>sueinphilly, does this mean that if he got a lousy number, it could cost you 11k more for the year? If it worked this way for my son, I would have been in frenzy this year!</p>
<p>This year his housing is 8600 and that is in one of the lowest cost dorms. Next year, there is only one dorm with low cost housing that cheap and it's not in a great location and I don't know how many low cost slots are available in that dorm.</p>
<p>the next pricing level dorms will be about 10,500 and that too is considered low cost.<br>
the next price point is 12-12,500. I will cry if he gets one of those slots. </p>
<p>I'm hoping that because he's not going in with a group, he might have a better shot at getting a cheap room. Any way I look at it is very likely that the housing cost for next year will be at least 2K more than this year. Now he won't need to have a meal plan in any of next years dorms. That was an additional 3600 for the year/ 120 a week. In all honestly, he would spend that much feeding himself if he wasn't on a meal plan. He doesn't want a meal plan, but I'm not going to give him a dime more than $120 for food. Being frugal isn't one of his best points (and he doesn't get that from me)</p>
<p>I am really hoping that by the time sophomore year comes around he will be able to sublet my brothers rent stabalized apt right in the area. I think it is $800 a month. That would be a major savings for me (even if I have to pay for internet and utilities.</p>
<p>sueinphilly, well for $800 in NYC sounds like it should have been rented yesterday. I hope for your sake that your son gets into the "least expensive" price point. It is such a joke. They are in college, not setting up a permanent home.</p>
<p>I actually mean to say by "junior' year.</p>
<p>My brother can only sublet 2 out of 4 years and he had a friend move out in Oct 07 so he has to wait until the fall of 09 before he can let someone else move in.</p>
<p>it's a really nice studio not far from NYU 'main campus".</p>
<p>it's really worth about $2500 a month. My brother has had possession since 1990, therefore his rent is $800</p>