Hello, I was wondering if anyone knew if OSU is generally good at giving the students the roommate and residence hall that they stated they want on their residence form?
Bumped for shared curiosity. Would also be curious to know how long it takes after the payment of the acceptance fee for the residency forms to be sent.
Depends on when you pay your acceptance fee and what hall you want. Certain residence halls are either reserved entirely for upperclassmen (Mendoza House, Res on 10th) or are highly desirable for them so there probably won’t any spots left by the time freshmen are getting their contracts (every new North campus dorm except Raney House). If you submit your acceptance fee fairly early, (and your intended roommates do too; IIRC they go by the date the last person sent it in. I’d shoot for mid-March or earlier), and you keep your building preferences realistic you have a pretty good chance of getting what you want.
I didn’t realize the roommates date of fee also made a difference. We paid $100 deposit and waiting for contract for freshman. I thought process was: soon as get contract, turn back in with the deposit and that is date used? So if you don’t have a roommate lined up by then, it will go with whoever is lower contract date once you figure out roommate if you match with someone else?
Wait what? I won’t have a roommate when I get my contract because I am trying for Scholars.
So if my roommate and I both paid our acceptance fees a couple of days ago, would it be at all possible for us to get a new north campus dorm?
Okay, so things are kind of different this year due to the requirement that freshmen AND sophomores have to live on campus. When just freshmen were required to live on campus, the sooner you paid your acceptance fee, the sooner your got your housing contract, and the sooner you turned in your housing contract, the better your chances of getting the residence hall you want.
As you can imagine, most sophomores don’t want to live in an older quad or in a room with no AC, and they get their housing contracts before incoming freshmen.
HOWEVER, there will be a new lottery system for sophomores at least (juniors and seniors were getting moved off campus this year due to not enough space for them in the dorms, unsure if this lottery system applies to them). They are basically randomly getting assigned numbers and then get to pick an available room whenever it’s time for their number to pick. It’s really hard to tell if that means sophomores will grab up the newer dorms or not, especially if they can’t room with their friends because of this system (ex. one gets to pick a room way before their friend does based on the lottery).
So, to answer your question, it’s hard to tell for this coming year because of the new system for upperclassmen. The only thing you can really do is pay your acceptance fee ASAP to get your housing contract sooner, and finish your housing contract ASAP.
Disclaimer: this is going off of the previous system. Things might have changed drastically this year (they did for upperclassmen)
@soyunchico You can go back and edit the contract after you submit it, including to add a roommate preference. The date that is used for priority is when it was originally submitted.
@Dmppp09 I’d be very surprised if you weren’t able to get a room in Raney, so long as you submit your housing contracts as soon as you get them
I called buckeyelink and talked to the housing contract people there yesterday. I asked when the housing contracts and roommate questionnaires would be sent out, and she said it was on a rolling basis, based upon when you have paid your acceptance fee. I paid my fee back in early December, and she said those who pay in December/January would be receiving the first round of housing choices. Obviously, she said those who are submitting their housing contracts first will be getting their first choices more often than those who submit them later.
If there are still roommate questionnaires and rolling contracts, I think that’s a pretty good indication that the housing selection process isn’t changing for freshman. Upperclassmen don’t have that this year, “going random” for us is now just picking an empty room and seeing who takes the other bed.