Can someone tell me something about what the housing situation is at RPI? It seems like upper class students “can no longer be guaranteed housing in the Residential Commons”.
http://reslife.rpi.edu/update.do?catcenterkey=99
What does that mean? I guess there’s some lottery. If you “lose” the lottery - where do you live?
Hello! I’m currently a freshman student and this is actually not what’s going on - at least not exactly. RPI removed the “room retention program,” which basically allowed you to retain the same exact room in the same building from year to year assuming you wanted to remain on-campus. This was a bit excessive since it mixed upperclassman with freshman sometimes, which is not what the school wanted so that right was eliminated this year (thankfully).
As for the residential commons, that’s just a fancy term for on-campus housing. All students are guaranteed some form of housing as undergraduates, but upperclassman students no longer are guaranteed spots in the traditional on-campus dormitories (aka Quadrangle, Freshman Hill dorms, etc.) There are many more off-campus housing options though that are at most a five minute or so walk from the school, like the Polytechnic apartments, RAHPS, Bryckwyck, City Station, and others which are also exceptionally cheaper than on-campus options.
In terms of the lottery, if you want to get on-campus housing in a tradition ‘underclassman’ residence hall and you’re considered an upperclassman (junior or senior), you’re placed in a random lottery to get that limited space. If you don’t get it, you’re placed in off-campus housing.
Granted, you’re not required to live in school-provided housing after sophomore year (or freshman if you get a Greek waiver) so I don’t get why you’d even want to stay on-campus or even off-campus with the school anyway. It’s over half as cheap in terms of rent to just get yourself a one bedroom apartment in downtown Troy.
Please note the dorms denoted “Upperclassman housing” in the Residence Life link below. Those are the off-campus options predominantly plus a couple of on-campus ones.
Revision: freshman currently do not live with upperclassman, the lottery is for upperclassman only housing on-campus (aka Warren Hall plus a few other spaces). Also, just to clarify, all freshman and sophomore students are guaranteed on-campus housing at Rensselaer.
Thanks!
DD was just accepted - so now I can do more research and risk getting excited about RPI… 
@theshadow - not sure if you saw this article on the Poly. Essentially, the current freshman class is very large and since on campus housing is guaranteed for fresh + sophmores, it is causing a shortage:
https://poly.rpi.edu/2017/03/08/sophomores_fear_housing_shortage/
This shouldn’t affect your D this year but it’s an interesting read.
At what stage do they fill the request and preference for housing? My son just accepted.
@notdrone Sometime in late May they start housing selection. I’d recommend doing it right away and you’ll get what your preferred housing pretty easily. There tends to be a good distribution in what students want and what’s available so most people get their first or second choice.