<p>Just have to vent - what a horrible process for freshmen!!! I'll elaborate later when I'm calmer.</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more–the situation stinks!</p>
<p>First of all, this nonsense with the hotel - notice they made no mention of that at orientation (when parents were there), though I’m sure it had been set up prior to that. Gee, I wonder why??? Secondly, the whole lottery process is stressful and cruel. It’s created an atmosphere of very bad feelings with the have and have-nots, the lucky and the unlucky. Now there are no rooms left in FYRE housing at all, and we have to do this whole selection thing again this Friday. In most colleges freshmen are all assigned housing (no lottery) on campus, and often it’s the upperclassmen who are not guaranteed housing on campus. Ithaca dropped the ball on estimating the size of the incoming class, which I grant you, is not an exact science, but they could have done much better. How about some of that $54000 a year we pay going towards new on-campus housing? I’m just very upset. And I’m trying not to say much to my daughter on the matter, I don’t want to ruin this time for her. I know she will live somewhere, but this is not the greatest start to her time at Ithaca. I’m not feeling the love right now.</p>
<p>Oh… that bad? We are looking into Ithaca for coming year…have they fixed this problem?</p>
<p>I agree Momof2. Very poor communication on the housing issue and unnecessary stress for incoming freshmen. My son is a freshman with a high lottery number there’s just nothing available. Does anyone have any sense of what it would be like for a freshman to be in one of the non-FYRE dorms that will be available to choose tomorrow? The lower Quads seem to have rooms in dorms that are not part of FYRE and if he can get one tomorrow he’ll grab that rather than try to wait for the privilege of being in a forced triple or a lounge. But I’m not sure what kind of freshman experience he’ll be having in those dorms. Does anyone have any insight?</p>
<p>mysterymom, my son is in the same boat. It’s so unfair for the kids with high numbers. They didn’t have a chance. Everything was gone by 7:05 yesterday, so today’s kids had no chance and the kids with high numbers have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to pick at the dregs. I too was wondering what the lower quads would be like, and whether they are populated mostly by upperclassmen. Still, my son would rather live there than off campus. This is a mess, and they obviously had knowledge of it long before orientation. I don’t like the way it was handled, and I don’t like the fact that the class is so huge. In addition to housing concerns, what will it mean for class size?</p>
<p>I could not agree more. The whole process is very stressful and disorganized. My child chose to attend Ithaca due in large part because of its size. This is NOT a huge state university and the housing process should actually run much more smoothly. My child had a very high number and yesterday at 6:59AM when he logged in to sign up for housing he was told there were NO freshman spaces available. That he would have to wait for today and/or Monday to get housing. It is absurd that there are more numbers then housing slots available. I do understand the lottery process so I did not expect all kids to get their 1st, 2nd or even 3rd choice of housing, but I DID expect for ALL of them to get some sort of freshman housing. This is really ridiculous. That being said, my other child attends a college of similar size and the freshman housing selection was much much much much smoother. You got to pick a roommate if you desired, or you can have one assigned to you based on your questionnaire. You were able to request which theme housing you might prefer, but ALL freshman were assigned randomly into any of the freshman dorms. It was a great smooth process and my child did not meet one person who was disappointed with the housing process. Ithaca is a different experience entirely. and not a good one!</p>
<p>I need to vent more… I was told when I called that there was only space for 1000 FYE kids but there were 1800 freshman. That is ludicrous. 45% of the freshman are to be left floundering in mixed housing or the hotel. It is really unacceptable. At first my child was thinking about the hotel option, but we have decided that it is really not a good idea. They plan to have at least 3 busses an hour from 7am -11pm (12pm-12am weekends) going back and fourth to campus. While thinking about it we realized that there would be no hanging out in his room or lets go to the cafeteria for a bite to eat spontaneous type things like that so we decided against it. Or if there was a study session (or a party), how would he get back to the hotel? It’s hard to walk at night on that country road. and those Ithaca winters, forget about it. I don’t know why they bothered to give #'s after the first 1000 kids when they had absolutely NO chance of even being able to pick any type of housing until today and/or Monday anyway. And to add further annoyance, if your child had a really high number, but his chosen roommate had a low number the higher number would have the advantage of the roommate with the lower number. So in effect any # after 750 (give or take) was just for show because they KNEW that those kids did not have ANY chance. Crazy and unorganized. Also, the person I spoke to on the phone said that I was not the only parent complaining and they were planning a meeting to discuss the feedback. That again is ridiculous. First of all, it doesn’t help our kids because any changes would not be until at least next year, and secondly, I can’t imagine that this is the first time they are having this problem and since they didn’t see fit to change it in past years, why would they now. On the other hand, if they do change the policy for next years incoming class, it could be at the expense of our kids AGAIN with sophomores then being second fiddle. I have to vent here because I really don’t want my child to know how upset I am. I keep telling him that in the end it will all work out fine. The question is, do I really believe that???</p>
<p>So how did people make out today? My son’s roommate logged on at 1pm and they were able to get a double in Clarke, one of the lower quads. I’m relieved that he’ll be on campus, but disappointed that he won’t get the benefit of the FYRE activities.</p>
<p>I just typed a long reply and CC logged me out and wouldn’t let me post it!! And of course it wasn’t saved!!! Grrrrrrrrr!!! I’ll try again.</p>
<p>I couldn’t send it again!! What is going on??</p>
<p>Same. Wrote a message to the administrator.</p>
<p>I keep trying to post something about this, but it keeps saying I can’t because “I’m not logged on”, even though I am. Here goes again.</p>
<p>My daughter got a room in Hood yesterday morning (substance-free, which is fine with me, but not FYRE), because her number was in the 600s. She got shut out of all the FYRE rooms on the first day she was able to choose (this past Tuesday, all the rooms were gone by 7:01 am, I kid you not). I feel so bad for all the kids whose numbers were over 1000 and who did not have a roommate with a lower number. As College bound says, why did they even bother assigning numbers to these kids? My problem with Ithaca is twofold:</p>
<p>I’ll send the rest in a separate post.</p>
<p>To continue:</p>
<ol>
<li> Admissions accepted too many students and many of these kids decided to come to Ithaca. They did not coordinate with Residence Life to plan appropriately for the incoming class. They could perhaps have done the housing process differently for the upperclassmen this past spring, like maybe offering the hotel to seniors and juniors. A hotel for FRESHMEN??? Are you serious??? They built up this FYRE thing and got everyone all excited about it, only to have many students shut out of the program. I know they sent us a letter a while back stating that some students would be housed in EO triples or lounges, but they did not tell us (then or at orientation) how bad the situation really was, and that is troubling. They should have foreseen this coming and planned for it. (A side note about too many students being accepted - I hope I’m not out of line here, but I’ve been reading many, many posts on Facebook from incoming Ithaca students and frankly I’m astonished that some of them got accepted into any college at all. I know that kids can be sloppy and free in their writing on FB, but when I keep seeing (over and over again) “where” instead of “were”, “to” instead of “too”, problems with “there, their, and they’re, and its and it’s”, and many other instances that show a lack of even the most rudimentary writing skills, I wonder what the hell they are doing here. And I’m not even going to get into the inane and poorly written content of many of those posts. Yikes.)</li>
</ol>
<p>More later.</p>
<p>Here’s the rest:</p>
<ol>
<li> The lottery process itself. As I mentioned in my earlier post, it is a horrible, almost barbaric way of doing this. You have students sitting in front of their computers before 7 am, hands poised over the mouse or track pad, hearts racing, and then it’s WW III at 7 o’clock. Rooms gone in 45 seconds. Awful, awful, awful. The kids even refer to the process as the “Hunger Games”. Like Collegebound, I too have a child in another school (SUNY), and the process is similar to the one at her child’s school: freshmen are ASSIGNED a room based on dorm/theme preferences, with or without a previously chosen roommate. It worked great, no stress at all (at a school much less than half the price of Ithaca). Why can’t Ithaca do it this way???</li>
</ol>
<p>We loved Ithaca when we visited the first time, again at my daughter’s audition, and again at orientation. We were (and still are) impressed by how warm, welcoming and helpful everyone was. The staff at Residence Life has been very patient and helpful throughout this ordeal, assuring upset students that everything will be OK. But it never should have gotten to this point. Everything probably will be OK, just not the great experience it could (and should) have been for so many students.</p>
<p>Your daughter was in the 600"s and she couldn’t get FYRE??? Unbelievable. my son was almost 1700. Yes you read right NOT seven hundred but SEVENTEEN HUNDRED! What chance did he have??? Why did they bother to give him a number??? The truth is, had we gotten a number in the 600’s, I would have thought that was pretty good. That goes to show I had no idea how bad the process was.</p>
<p>Yep, she just was not fast enough on the draw (and Homerconnect was acting screwy and did not let her log in right away, which did not help). Before she logged in that morning, there were only 11 rooms left in the upper quads, and 17 in the towers (for girls - I think there were more for the boys) and they just went in one minute. It was so awful. I hope things work out for your son. Is he going for a triple or the lounge?</p>
<p>My daughters number was in the 1300’s and needless to say she did not get her first, second or heck even third choice! When there was finally an option three days after she was to originally choose we had to go with Emerson Suites in order to make sure we kept her on campus and not in the hotel. This meant paying more for the room. This situation is ridiculous and completely unfair.</p>
<p>Yes it is. I think there were also a lot of kids who had to take singles (who did not originally plan on getting one) in order to stay on campus and they too have to pay more. I think Ithaca should offer the Emerson and single kids some sort of compensation.</p>
<p>my son got into a lounge. It really wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that he will have to move after the fall semester. We have no way of knowing where he will have to move or who he will live with, but at least he is set for the first semester. It really is a terrible unfair system. They should just make enough dorms for freshmen only and keep them all together like most other colleges of similar size do. This is very frustrating for everyone involved.</p>