<p>Any word on Wilder?</p>
<p>Does Talbot House have good house community? I haven’t heard much.</p>
<p>Talbot has a wonderful house community with many wonderful people. :)</p>
<p>I’m in Morrow, although I wanted to be on Green Street. 
Anyone know anything about the house?</p>
<p>Don’t feel sad squares, unexpected housing assignments have a way of surprising you. I was assigned to Cutter as a first year (the ugly house) and I thought it was the end of the world. But I met my first and closest Smith friends there and we’re still super close to this day. Had I lived in another house, we probably never would have met. </p>
<p>Just focus on making the most of the house you’ve been assigned, making friends and having fun. If it really stinks you can always move, but give your new house a chance.</p>
<p>I agree about giving your assigned house a fair chance and I say this as an acknowledged Green Street partisan.</p>
<p>My D was given temporary housing in Morrow. Does anyone know what typically happens for students with temporary housing?</p>
<p>Here’s an article from last year’s Sophian about the housing shortage and temporary housing: [Smith</a> Students Wait and Wonder as Res Life Resolves Housing Shortage - News](<a href=“http://media.www.smithsophian.com/media/storage/paper587/news/2008/09/11/News/Smith.Students.Wait.And.Wonder.As.Res.Life.Resolves.Housing.Shortage-3426292.shtml]Smith”>http://media.www.smithsophian.com/media/storage/paper587/news/2008/09/11/News/Smith.Students.Wait.And.Wonder.As.Res.Life.Resolves.Housing.Shortage-3426292.shtml)</p>
<p>The goal of Res Life is to find your D a permanent room asap, so as they find out who is not at Smith they’ll be moving folks into permanent rooms.</p>
<p>Temp housing is more annoying than anything else, but it is definitely temporary. In time she’ll be placed into a permanent house, the lurch is that her permanent house may or may not be Morrow and she may have already made friends in Morrow, but first-year is still early enough to make plenty of new friends in her permanent house as well (she’ll automatically have out-of-house friendships, which can be nice). </p>
<p>There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence for why we’re having housing shortages at Smith, the answer I’ve found most plausible is that with the recession, more juniors are choosing not to go abroad, or to go for less time. Might also just be that we’re quite popular with the applicants these days and more students than expected accept their admissions offers. </p>
<p>Anyway, just hang in there, it’ll sort itself out.</p>
<p>It’s also possible that Smith, attempting to ensure enrollment levels sufficient to cover the portion of its budget which is dependent on tuition fees, admitted more students than it otherwise would have. Before colleges decide how many students they will admit, they must predict, each year, what percentage of admitted students will actually enroll. The predictions in the Higher Ed community last Fall were that gloomy economic circumstances would cause students to decline offers of admission–but no one knew how many students would find themselves in this position. Some colleges admitted extra students. Curiously, the predictions have not come true, especially at the top schools like Smith. Students are finding ways to make it work. To some extent, this is because the number of prospective students is so high (a so-called “baby boomlet”); even in difficult economic times, there are qualified students who can pay or earn scholarships, and/or are willing to go into debt. “Need-blind” admissions policies have been finessed into “need-sensitive” assessments of ability to pay, at some schools (I don’t know how Smith has handled this). And some schools cover their bottom line in a manner which the term “finesse” describes not at all: earlier this year, Reed College reworked its list of prospective admits to eliminate 100 financially needy candidates in favor of 100 who could pay full costs. (Downer, bummer, I know. By comparison, Smith’s helpful approach to its own mistake seems refreshing.)</p>
<p>I’m in Baldwin. Anyone have any info? House community, traditions, room sizes/special considerations, etc.?</p>
<p>Obviously, the problem with housing has many reason, but I’d go with Smithieandproud’s explanation of fewer juniors going abroad. I don’t think that’s because of the economy but because, as Smith becomes more and more science-oriented, it becomes more difficult for a larger portion of the students to leave for a year. </p>
<p>I don’t think Smith’s entering class has changed significantly to warrant a housing crunch. But I may be wrong.</p>
<p>I hope that’s true - since they have talked about upping class size for the small classes it would be a double negative to also have overenrolled.</p>
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<p>Not sure that’s the reason.</p>
<p>2005/2006 Engineering 3.2% Bio 8.5% Physical sciences 2.5% Total 14.2%
2007/2008 Engineering 3.0% Bio 4.7% Physical sciences 3.0% Total 10.7%
2008/2009 Engineering 2.0% Bio 5.0% Physical sciences 3.0 % Total 10%</p>
<p>Computer and information sciences varied little. 2005/06 1.4% 2007/08. 9% 2008/09 1%</p>
<p>I don’t believe many students were assigned temp housing. It is possible Smith’s yield was higher than expected. The calculatations aren’t an exact science.</p>
<p>Last year, there was also a housing crunch, and supposedly fewer people going abroad was much of the problem. I doubt that more juniors are going abroad this year. Probably even fewer, in fact. I am one of two or three juniors in my class in my house going abroad; that’s certainly not half the juniors in my house, and normally about half the juniors at Smith go abroad. Of course, I’m not suggesting that my house is necessarily representative of the school. </p>
<p>However, I think fewer people going abroad has more to do with economic problems (e.g. a weak dollar, expensive travel to the British Isles, etc.) than more science majors. </p>
<p>As I mentioned on another thread, housing signups were a DISASTER last year for many houses. There were sophomores stuck in 1st year rooms over simple administrative errors (and Smith not really doing anything to correct it), for instance. The coordination between the housing office and JYA office was also quite poor; people had to sign up for housing before they got their JYA acceptances, so many JYA folks were forced to unnecessarily take rooms from non-JYA ppl in the same house.</p>
<p>Yeah, room draw is always a nightmare but last year I heard it was especially bad. Thankfully I was a senior and got to skip out on the mess.</p>
<p>What happened last year? I’ve heard that from several students and parents, but never with many details.</p>
<p>I thought that if you choose to stay in your house you absolutely can - was that affected as well?</p>
<p>No, there are two draws that happen every spring. One is housing lottery and the second is room draw. You don’t have to enter the housing lottery if you don’t want to, you can opt to just stay in your current house, but everyone has to do room draw. </p>
<p>During room draw everyone is supposed to get a random lottery number and then you go in and pick your room in order of class seniority and then in order of lottery number. On paper, it’s very orderly, in practice it’s a chaotic mess. Also, Smith just switched to a computerized system for running housing draw and assigning lottery numbers and the program seems to have a lot of glitches (two years ago it assigned the rising seniors numbers in alphabetical order instead of randomly and all the numbers had to be re-done). </p>
<p>Adding to the frustration is that the housing office is probably the least transparent and accessible of all Smith houses. The housing coordinator almost never returns emails, and it is impossible to get a face-to-face appointment with her, particularly during room-draw/housing lottery time. </p>
<p>So basically there are often errors and hurt feelings that are compounded by poor administrative communication, and on top of that there’s the general fuss that not everyone can be satisfied every year. </p>
<p>I heard that last year was particularly bad with the number of admin errors and screw ups, but hopefully they’ll learn from their mistakes.</p>
<p>The former housing coordinator, Randy ___?, was much appreciated.</p>
<p>OWM, yes, you can always stay in your house. Room draw, though, happens every year.</p>