<p>I'm sort of confused on the housing issue at Caltech. Do I have to sign up now, or do i wait until school starts. How should I pick, and when do i change?</p>
<p>When you arrive, you are randomly assigned to a temporary room, where you'll stay for about two weeks. The first week is Orientation; the second is Rotation (also, classes begin), which is a process where you visit all 8 of the Houses during lunches and dinners. After this you assign a rating to your top 5 choices of House, and get picked into one of them when Rotation concludes.</p>
<p>There are also forms and stuff but I think these are mostly after you arrive on campus...don't really remember. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Possibly useful websites:</p>
<p>Housing office: <a href="http://housing.caltech.edu/undergrad/%5B/url%5D">http://housing.caltech.edu/undergrad/</a></p>
<p>Brief description of Rotation, along with the Rotation Rules, which basically exist to prevent any house or student from unfairly biasing freshmen toward or against a given house: <a href="http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/%7Eihc/#rotation%5B/url%5D">http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~ihc/#rotation</a></p>
<p>When you get to Tech, you'll get detailed information about the whole procedure, so don't worry too much about it now.</p>
<p>For forms, you'll get a packet of forms in the mail sometime this summer, it will have a checklist of everything you need to do. Don't worry about not getting housing if you forget to do something, people here are pretty relaxed as long as you get it in eventually.</p>