<p>My D’s potential roommate messaged her last week saying that she cannot go to Bama as she cannot afford it. We felt bad for her. Now my daughter is left without a roommate in a doubleroom in Tutwiler. How to find any Honors students still looking for roommates? School starts in a couple of weeks and we were surprised by this last minute development.</p>
<p>This may not actually be such a bad thing. If housing does not fill the space she can go to housing with a specific request for some one to move in. Last year one of my D’s pledge sisters had her roommate back out as well. My daughter ended up switching to her room with no problems. Maybe once she moves in and meets some of the girls she will meet someone to switch. Plus if your D is going through recruitment a little alone time will be a blessing. You can also contact housing to see if they have already filled the room.</p>
<p>Housing is having a major problem with overflow female freshmen students. At least 25, if not more, freshmen have been added as roommates to rooms that upperclassmen had contracted as single rooms.</p>
<p>It was such a problem that junior and senior females with housing scholarships were offered the full value of their housing scholarship ($4,400 per semester) as a cash payment to leave the dorm space and move off campus wherever they could find at this late date. </p>
<p>My daughter had a roommate put in her contracted single room, and we were successful in getting her room restored to a single. Then we received the offer of the full value of her housing scholarship if she moved off campus. We didn’t feel it was right of the University to force people into this overflow situation; it’s not fair to the incoming freshman or the upperclassman. Even at this late date, my daughter was able to find a room in a house with a good friend of hers from high school, so we thought we’d take advantage of the offer and free up a space on campus. She never would have lived there if she had to pay for it, since she had the housing scholarship. But with money in her hand, she was very happy to move from a dorm to a house with a friend, instead of a suite with 2 unknown freshmen.</p>
<p>Anyway, for any forced doubles, the university’s goal is to move those freshmen out of those rooms as soon as other rooms open up in rooms that were marketed as doubles.</p>
<p>Once your daughter’s roommate notifies the University she is not coming, it likely will not be very long at all before the University assigns another freshman to her room.</p>
<p>I can attest that the University is still moving students as they find empty spaces. We, too, had a forced double in a contracted single room until yesterday, when the extra roomie was moved – we know not where, but she will likely be in a better situation because presumably the University didn’t move her into another room that was intended to be a singlem but forced to be a double.</p>
<p>It breaks my heart to hear that a student had to withdraw within a week or two of starting school due their not being able to afford to attend. Very sad.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>yes, it is very sad, yet it happens everywhere. Many students and families are overly optimistic about how much they can pay or how much they can borrow. Summer is the time when many parents apply for loans to cover the “family contribution” and then find out that they can’t qualify…or students find out that they can’t borrow w/o cosigners. </p>
<p>We see this situation every summer in the FA section on CC.</p>
<p>:( Heartbreaking I’m sure</p>
<p>I’m so glad to hear that they’re moving the overflow freshmen out of the contracted single rooms. I was really worried that some of those poor freshmen would be walking into a horrible situation with a very angry upset roommate who would take the forced double situation out on the roommate who didn’t have a choice in the matter. (Yes, some girls can be very mean to each other.)</p>
<p>It was going to be a horrible start to the year for both girls, but almost more so for the freshmen who were stuck someplace they knew they weren’t wanted. What a way to suck joy out of what should be a happy start-of-college experience.</p>
<p>Even if the overflow students still end up being in double rooms, at least they’re in rooms that were designed to be doubles. Plus, they knew that with making their attendance decision so late in the game that they weren’t going to have much dorm room selection available anyway.</p>
<p>Just as this roommate can’t afford Bama, I wonder if some of the overflow is caused by other students realizing they can’t afford their first choice, so they’re switching to Bama. Is it possible this late in the game for any NMF students to switch to Bama and still take advantage of the scholarship?</p>
<p>There is a LOT of shuffling around right before school starts. Kids decide to go to a different college, decide not to go to college, situations change, people change.
Don’t freak out, helicopter parents.
Things WILL work out.
Eventually.</p>
<p>There is a LOT of shuffling around right before school starts. Kids decide to go to a different college, decide not to go to college, situations change, people change.
Don’t freak out, helicopter parents.
Things WILL work out.
Eventually.</p>
<p>DD’s 4th roommate decided to go to UA Huntsville instead. She refused to do the work to release her room before the deadline, so the 3 remaining roommates could not pull anyone in. They ended up with a random draw - the girl seems nice, so crisis averted.</p>
<p>Yes, there is some shuffling around during the summer…colleges call it “summer melt” and they have models that show how many to expect, so it’s built into acceptance numbers. One year, I think it was VT didn’t have the typical summer melt and they ended up with too many frosh and the college was scrambling to fit in the extra kids… it may not have been VT, but maybe another mid-Atlantic school. The story was in the news. </p>
<p>I suspect that the UAH girl was from the HSV area and is commuting. </p>
<p>I know one former Bama Bound student who will be commuting to UAH because a couple of months ago she learned that she’s expecting a baby. After the baby is born, the parents will watch the baby while she goes to school. These things happen. </p>
<p>Over the summer lots of things happen…often financial and sometimes just parent VS child issues and the parent no longer thinks the child is mature enough to “go away”. </p>
<p>We see this sort of thing all the time on CC. During senior year everyone (parents and child) are excited about the college process and if they’re not sure where the funds will be coming from, they convince themselves that they’ll “make it work somehow”. But, there isn’t a tuition fairy out there, and sometime even a few thousand dollars needed can’t be found. So, when the first bills arrive and the well is dry, the handwriting that’s been on the wall for months is finally read.</p>