How do freshmen get assigned dorms at Swarthmore?

I’ve heard that sophomores and up use the lottery system, but I’ve never heard anything about freshmen being involved in that. Are they? Or are they randomly assigned dorms?

Randomly assigned through the office of Residential Life. You’ll probably get a better assignment freshman year than sophomore year since sophs are “low man on the totem pole.” The College holds open rooms in most dorms for freshmen, including dorms that sophs would never get into during the lottery.

Thank you!

Random is probably not the best description of the process of assigning dorms to incoming first-year students. Incoming students fill out a housing questionnaire which residential life uses in putting together roommates and assigning dorm rooms. So there is method to the madness – it’s not completely random.

OK, dadx3, having two kids who’ve now graduated from Swat, I was a little too “flip” with my answer. Res Life does send out a questionnaire and based on the questionnaire answers, does a reasonably good job of matching roommates. Sometimes. If students are truthful answering the questionnaire, the whole process works better.