<p>[Student</a> Affairs | Housing & Residential Communities](<a href=“http://housing.ua.edu/new_students/selection_schedule.cfm]Student”>http://housing.ua.edu/new_students/selection_schedule.cfm)</p>
<p>Yikes…is March 22 a good time? I guess that means I’ll have to do it on the day…</p>
<p>Is there a separate application for Honors housing?</p>
<p>no sep app for honors housing. As long as you’ve been accepted to honors, you’ll have access to select an honors bed.</p>
<p>March 22 is a good time…be there right on the minute your hour comes. Also…look on Facebook for potential suitemates. :)</p>
<p>i like how it’s an hour after school ;)</p>
<p>i might do that, but i dont have to select roommates before i select rooms, right? :)</p>
<p>what if i miss the date? do i have to wait until april? the description doesnt make it clear
</p>
<p>No…you do NOT have to have roommates lined up. If you have no idea who you want to room with, you can just select a suite that has an open bed in it.</p>
<p>You may want to try to select a room with more than one open bed in case you want to “pull in” someone that you do want for a suitemate.</p>
<p>I have no idea how it works when kids miss their “time”…I don’t recommend it! If necessary, have someone who understands what to do, do the process for you. Or, stay at school and do it from a school computer.</p>
<p>We’ve got the first selection spot (thank you to this board for giving me the heads up on that!), but I’m assuming upperclassmen pick even earlier, so do you think there will be completely empty rooms in the honors dorms? D is planning on trying to find an empty room and pulling in her 2 friends.</p>
<p>There will be some empty rooms because many current residents choose to not recontract for the same space and instead move to a different suite in the same or another residence hall, move off campus, or graduate. Housing reserves the right to change upperclassmen room assignments, but rarely does, to make enough empty suites for freshmen. Depending on the proportion of males and females requesting housing, a suite that was assigned to male residents one year could be assigned to female residents the next and vice versa.</p>
<p>Rose808: Upperclassmen will select their housing in early to mid-February.</p>
<p>I know in my soph son’s case, his entire suite is moving to an off-campus apt next year…they’ve already gotten it reserved. It’s very nice and will be cheaper than honors housing. </p>
<p>These kids aren’t the only ones doing this. </p>
<p>Unless you have a NMF scholarship, paying for honors housing can seem unnecessary after a couple of years when cheaper housing can be found close to campus. Some off-campus apts are just as close to the Quad (maybe closer) than honors housing. So, distance doesn’t have to be a factor.</p>
<p>Also, 2 apt complexes that are further away from campus are on the Crimson Ride route.</p>
<p>Then she should have a pretty good chance of getting a good room 
Now she just has to decide which is her first choice.</p>
<p>When does one find out about honors acceptance? We still haven’t heard. (Have heard re acceptance into U of A, but no word re honors program or scholarship $$. I think I will live-chat with 'em tomorrow…can’t keep all this stuff straight!)</p>
<p>@mom2collegeki9ds – we just got acceptance letter last week, IIRC, and we are still clueless. (I have an insane job that eats up much of my time…but starting tomorrow, I’m on vacation, so I’ll have time then to figure things out.)</p>
<p>Dumb question–can rpobably find all this out in acceptance packet anyway–but can you direct me to the FB page with potential roommates? Can one actually look for someone who shares one’s interests? That sounds muy cool!</p>
<p>@momreads–when do freshmen select housing? Now? (I am getting a sense of panic here, LOL.)</p>
<p>Thank you siglio for linking the freshman room selection schedule. March 22nd is a very good selection date and you should have a good selection of suites available in a variety of honors residence halls. As a reminder, the times listed are in Central Time, so remember the time difference.</p>
<p>@LadyDianeski Freshmen won’t be selecting housing until March or April; siglio linked the exact schedule. A link to the Class of 2015 facebook page will not be included in the acceptance packet unless UA decides to create an official group. As for finding potential roommates via facebook, the group I joined as a hs senior had a couple of threads/discussions with questionnaires that people filled out with info about them. Even though I didn’t end up being roommates with almost all of the people I met on facebook, it was a great way to get to meet people before school started. Remember too that many great and interesting students that your son might become good friends and/or roommates with may not be members of the facebook group, let alone post in a discussion about potential roommates.</p>
<p>LadyDianeski: Do not panic about honors housing or any housing situation. You will receive notification from UA with all the information regarding the selection of housing. Regarding roommates, not every kid has or will join a Facebook 2015 group, so your student may just end up selecting blindly. It’s not the worst thing. My son had an early selection time as a freshman. He ended up with pretty decent roommates. He does not room with any of them this year, as all three moved off campus to save money. My son is a NM kid, so housing is included in his scholarship. He found his current roommates (who probably will be his roommates next year, too) through his classes or other organizations on campus.</p>
<p>You can also find roommates using the roommate finder option. My son and his best friend are in separate suites, but they found suitemates through the roommate finder option on the housing site. The two suites, plus a couple other, are all good friends and plan to return to their same rooms next year. They’re engineering majors and love the location of Riverside West to the classes, dining, church.</p>
<p>My D also decided to take the luck of the draw with roommates (which made me crazy!) and roomed with 2 sophomores and another freshman this year. It’s been fine but I know the 2 sophs are moving off campus for next year; not sure about the other freshman. D also has the NMF housing scholarship so she’s staying put.</p>
<p>One thing she did and told me about afterward: at room selection time she looked for a suite with at least 2 spaces open. She figured if there was a room with 3 spots taken those people might have been really close friends & she would have been the “odd man out.”</p>
<p>DS also went in without a specific plan, was pulled into a spot by someone on here, but they didn’t know each other. Seems to have worked out fine, the four roomates co-exist, not much more, but no drama etc. As a Mom I had hoped for something more but as a guy, he’s good with it. Having your own room (Ridgecrest West) makes all the difference.</p>
<p>D joined the FB group but chose not to input her information. She said the majority were party/drinking types and people who were going to rush. Not her style. She did enter her info into the UA roommate finder and is touching base with one girl as we speak.</p>
<p>My son’s room selection process was a comic affair. He didn’t use any of the roommate finder services. On selection day he logged on as early as possible and noted immediately that his dorm of choice, Ridgecrest South, was fully booked. He then began searching at Ridgecrest West.</p>
<p>He found a suite with one bed open and snagged it quickly, just to avoid getting shut out. Rooms were disappearing methodically right before our eyes. We noted that the names of the occupants were listed in conjunction with each suite. We then came up with the idea of firing up another computer and seeing if we could Facebook his potential suite mates. </p>
<p>We did so, found them, and noted they were all freshmen coming out of the same high school in Alabama. Fearing being the odd man out, my son began a series of room switches worthy of a Marx Brothers scene. Each time he switched we’d find at least one suite mate on Facebook that he’d reject for whatever imagined incompatibility seemed apparent at the time. </p>
<p>Finally, exhausted, and with the inventory dwindling, he threw in the towel and grabbed a room in a suite occupied by three sophomores from Alabama who were obviously good friends. At least they seemed “cool” to him, as best could be discerned from Facebook.</p>
<p>So how did it play out? His sophomore suite mates have treated him well, they occasionally hang out, but they mostly co-exist peacefully without being BFFs. And the guys in his first suite of choice have turned out to be among his best friends at Bama. He’ll probably end up sharing a suite with at least some of them next year. Go figure.</p>
<p>Having a private room does not make one immune from a bad suite mate situation, but it seems to mitigate the risk quite a bit. And my son’s take on making friends at Bama, which he shared with me the other night is this: “Dad there are so many cool people here that I don’t see how you couldn’t make friends, as long as you’re willing to be a little outgoing and friendly yourself.”</p>
<p>Hopefully someone can tell how the Facebook roommate finder works…I don’t know.</p>
<p>LadyD…have you submitted deposits (for admission and housing)? If not, you need to do so. Otherwise, your son will have a late housing selection date.</p>