“Communal facilities/house activities are still available to house members who have chosen to live off campus after first year.” This is the first time I’ve read this anywhere. Is this true for all halls? Do people actually do this very often?
@Lea111 Yes. Upperclassmen who moved off campus can become “house associates”. Their IDs will still let them into the building and they can sign themselves in.
Do you know which houses are located in which building of north? Maybe which floors hold which houses, etc.? If you have a 900+ room does that mean you are pretty high up?
Building A has Thangaraj on 3-5, Rogers on 6-8, Trott on 9-11, and Strongin on 12-14
Building C has Yuen on 3-5, Boyer on 6-8, and Dougan-Niklason on 9-11
Building D has Behar on 3-5
If you have a 9xx room you’re in the lowest floor on either Trott or Dougan-Niklason, but you’re pretty high up.
So you’ll get in great shape taking the stairs or hope the elevators work?
@School17 Yep, that’s the fun of living in a high rise
The real fun comes when you try to store your stuff in the basement at the end of the year! Not enough time, not enough elevators, always full by the time they get to the upper floors.
That’s true! My D15 lives on the 15th floor of a res. hall (not UChicago) and she missed her flight home this spring because it took extra time to get up and down the elevators. Best to schedule all outgoing transportation for late afternoon, just in case.
@exacademic In North you reserve a box for yourself that no one else can use when it comes time to store your stuff over the summer so you don’t have to worry about other people filling it up. The box is kinda small though…
Correct – the issue wasn’t the box. It was getting stuff to the box when the hours you could access it were limited, carts were in short supply, and elevators were consistently full by the time they got to the top (kids on lower floors went up to go down). Hopefully, logistics will improve next year – this was the first end-of-the-year checkout for North. Setting a checkout deadline for midday of the day after finals probably aggravates the problem considerably.
That check-out deadline is typical for colleges and won’t change. The trick is to get most of your stuff down to storage by the last final exam with any remaining boxes (bed linens, small items) to be carried down a few flights if necessary the morning of check-out.
The residents might want to petition the people in charge to make sure storage is available beginning after the last final or even - on a limited basis - for a couple hours per night the day or two before. Many will have started packing during finals week (it’s a great way to procrastinate) and should have a lot of boxes ready to go well before check-out. Perhaps the RA’s can have signup sheets available to keep the process moving along. International students, for instance, tend to pack up earlier than US residents (probably because the former have flights to catch Friday evening while the latter are waiting for mom, dad and the car to show up on Sat. morning) so would likely appreciate getting a lot of their stuff down by Thurs. evening and getting checked out on Friday.
If they open storage say, from 7-9 pm on Thurs, 5 - 10 pm on Friday and 7 - noon on Saturday (day of check-out) that should be plenty of time for 800 residents. (My D16’s school had to evacuate 1100 kids in front of Hurricane Matthew last fall and it didn’t take anywhere near 12 hours to load them up and get the busses moving). Kids just need to take advantage of those earlier hours so that the whole process is smoother. Signup sheets should take care of that.
Those who tire of the long elevator waits can always sign up with Collegeboxes or similar. They actually come to your dorm room and move your stuff out (they also deliver to your next dorm room). It’s a few hundred dollars but might be worth it if it means you can catch an earlier, cheaper flight as a result. Perhaps you can do a combination of Collegeboxes and dorm storage which will reduce costs considerably.
Lots of creative options available. There will always be crowds on morning of checkout, btw, because there will always be first years just learning the process.
Actually, I think there is some flexibility on move-out deadline. You just have to know in advance you’ll need it. High floor plus late finals probably means it’s worth requesting the extension.
And presumably they’ll figure out, given last year’s experience, that they need more hours of storage room access earlier in the process. There were also mixed signals re what could be stored (5 items vs. fill the cage). My guess is that the attempt to have uniform campus rules created problems in the high rise with cages scenario.
@exacademic @JBStillFlying Part of the issue is that move-out overlaps with the end of finals week. One of my classes included a take-home final that was sent out on Thursday morning, and due 24 hours later. Writing three full-fledged essays in 24 hours while dealing with move-out logistics was…fun.
@JBStillFlying Don’t plan for a Saturday check-out. This year for First through Third Years, it was Friday, 9 June at 3PM. The last day of finals. The students could apply for an extension, however there were a surprising number of kids who didn’t know that or didn’t know they had to be out by 3PM or on Friday or were finishing their finals like @DunBoyer. We ran into parents who had driven in that morning, thinking they’d have the afternoon and evening plus Saturday morning to pack up stuff and load their cars, only to find out that they just had a couple of hours. We were just glad that our DD was fairly organized and was out by 2PM; she didn’t want us to be caught up in the festivities and traffic of Class Day, although I am not sure the traffic in front of BJ could have been any worse than what we fought through.
The strange thing is that graduating fourth-years were allowed to stay until the 11th IIRC, although I believe dining halls closed that Friday anyway. So the University was still spending money to keep dorms open - and saving money by closing dining halls when students were still on campus. They just didn’t want 1st-3rd years to stay
I’m trying to figure out why, and three possibilities come to mind:
- They really wanted to start cleaning/renovating preparations earlier (though the work itself couldn't happen with graduating students still on-site).
- Summer programs may start on the 10th or 11th and need every dorm bed they can get (I'm in Hyde Park for the summer and the dorm population clearly isn't at normal levels, so this is out)
- They house these programs by filling a couple of dorms (North, Max P) while closing down the others, but it was easier to make everyone move out at once and leave North/Max 4th-years' rooms unused during early summer programs
I don’t feel any of these is a particularly compelling explanation, so there’s probably some vital piece of information I’m missing.
@NorthLeftCoast at #33 that’s actually helpful info. and that’s also crazy stressful to make the 1-3’s leave the last day of finals! When do they open storage???
Will be advising my kid to request an extension. It’s no big deal because we can drive down to help move her out. Just don’t want her stressing when she doesn’t have to. If she’s out the day before - fine. This way she has the option. Is the extension subject to approval?
Also, don’t the RA’s hold a house meeting regarding move-out? My other kids’ colleges all did this. Thought it was best practices now to have those. Perhaps they did and kids didn’t attend (and were in a single so didn’t have a roomie to depend on for vital info). Important: If the RA has a meeting marked as “Mandatory” and you need to skip due to lab or practice or whatever . . . .find out later on what it was about 
@JBStillFlying This varies by house, but we didn’t have a house meeting dedicated to move-out. That might be a good idea this year, based on the frenzied chaos I witnessed this spring.
The subject was mentioned at several house meetings leading up to move-out day, and in various PSAs on Facebook/by e-mail/in the house’s weekly newsletter, but these formats are less question-friendly and easier to miss than a meeting that everyone must attend.
Though, having organized events/activities for mid-sized groups, I can attest to the fact that you can repeat the same message a dozen times and it’ll slip some people’s minds, so some degree of chaos will probably be a feature of move-in day no matter what.
Some of the chaos was the result of RHs saying one thing (in advance) and security staff having been given different instructions. So kids who did read, plan ahead, and rely on info distributed by the house faced problems on the day. RHs generally erred on the side of common sense, whereas whomever gave staff their marching orders was very rigid. Again, last year was the first move-out day at North and its set-up is different from most of the other dorms.
So far (one year in), my impression is that UChicago isn’t very user-friendly wrt undergrad-related logistics. Mercifully, all of our UofC flights are on Southwest which keeps last minute changes cheap and easy (or lets me approximate and then tweak as additional info trickles in).
Hi, are the beds ( in double room) pre-assigned?
or is it first come first serve as in we get to choose the bed that we prefer, depends on who arrives first?
Thanks