<p>Is there any advantage to sending in our deposit early rather than in the spring? I heard it may affect sophomore year housing --is that true?</p>
<p>Unless they have changed things, when you place your housing deposit determines your number for choosing housing for all of your remaining years at the U. There is still a general lottery, but after that, your number comes into play. If you know you are going to the U, I would make my housing deposit ASAP.</p>
<p>Not sure that’s totally true. I just called UMiami housing office and they said that submitting your housing deposit and committing to miami only affects freshman year and has nothing to do with sophomore year and on. And even so, nearly all freshman will get housing anyway. so i don’t think we need to send it in right now</p>
<p>^that would be a totally new policy. In past years, the date you originally deposited had an impact on your housing number for later years. I am 100% positive on this! as we lived through it. My D deposited very late, as she attended accepted student weekends through April, and she didn’t make a decision until the very end of April. As a result, she had a low housing number. Everything worked out perfectly, but she got lucky. </p>
<p>@jazz1005 </p>
<p>@dumbo11 is absolutely correct. I confirmed this with the the director of housing last spring and also watched the housing selection process take place shortly thereafter. The earliest students to commit end up with the best housing priority numbers - within their class - for subsequent years. When the housing signup process takes place in the spring, those current freshmen who committed first will select their rooms before those who committed later in the spring - in both cases after upperclassmen have already chosen housing of course. </p>
<p>This is assuming the student is selected in the “lottery” which almost all freshmen typically are if they opt in for on campus housing during the specified opt in period. The same housing admin I spoke to last spring is a member of a Facebook parent group and has confirmed to the group that this spring’s housing signup process is unchanged from past years. Another parent of a current freshmen started a thread here alerting students to this policy and it looks as if you posted in that thread as well asking if it was accurate so I know you saw his post : ) </p>
<p>The housing signup process for sophomore, junior and senior years has multiple steps - an initial opt-in period where students indicate their intention to live on campus the following year, followed by a lottery which is completely random, after which students learn whether they were “selected” for the lottery (actually there are two separate lotteries but most freshmen are only eligible to participate in the lottery for Mahoney/Pearson/Eaton - the other lottery is for University Village which requires junior status based on credits earned, including AP) and if they do win the lottery they are assigned a signup time. That signup time is based on how long you have lived on campus - not starting the day you moved into the res halls in August of your freshmen year (since that would be the same for everyone) but the day you accepted admission and paid your enrollment and housing deposits. </p>
<p>*None of this relates to selecting on campus housing for incoming freshmen - they don’t participate in the lottery process.</p>
<p>@Illinoismom93 and @dumbo11 are absolutely correct.</p>
<p>Taken from the _ website:</p>
<p>“New student (not yet living on campus)
New students who have been admitted to the University are eligible to apply for housing on-line via CaneLink. To activate access, specifically to the housing application area, admitted students will need to pay the $300 enrollment deposit to verify their admission acceptance. In the housing application area located under the “UM Housing” section of CaneLink, new students view a sample housing agreement, preview an application tutorial, and see the housing rates for the coming year and apply for housing.
Students admitted for fall entrance should apply for housing prior to May 1st to receive a priority housing assignment-housing applications received after that this date are accepted on a space available basis. Students admitted for spring semester can apply for housing after November 1st and will be accepted on a space available basis.
Applying early will determine in part a student’s future priority to access single rooms, be considered for room changes, and having earlier housing sign-up appointment times. New freshman not living with their parents will be required to live on campus, as long as space is available.
For more specific questions about applying for housing, new students should contact the Assignments Staff in the Housing and Residential Life Office at (305) 284-4505 or through e-mail via <a href=“mailto:housing@miami.edu”>housing@miami.edu</a>.”</p>
<p>***The only problem is thatCaneLink is not ready to start accepting housing applications/deposits for incoming freshman. </p>
<p>I paid my freshman housing deposit on February 7. 2014</p>
<p>I did not receive a number but I received confirmation of payment .</p>
<p>This may seem silly but is there a disadvantage in any merit aid awarded if you have already enrolled and paid your housing deposit prior to hearing about merit, which is set to come out the end of March?</p>
<p>No i think there are very separate.</p>
<p>While I’m not sure whether I will ultimately be attending the []<em>[] in August, I paid my $300 today. I did this because I want as good of a chance as possible to secure housing in Mahoney/Pearson and/or a good lottery # for future years. The strange thing is that I’m still not able to pay the $250 housing deposit. I guess the []</em>[] needs a day or two to clear my cc payment.</p>
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<p>@NYMom3Kids
The thing is - this year’s timing for merit awards is different than it has been in past years. Until this year, merit awards typically were awarded at the time of admission, so I think I understand your concern. I heard a similar concern voiced prior to S/S weekend two years ago when some students debated whether to commit to the <em> prior to the weekend, worrying that they might be hurting their chances at S/S if they’d already committed. I honestly can’t imagine the </em>'s admissions office taking the time and manpower required to sort through acceptances and crossmatch them to pending merit awards so they could save their $ for those who hadn’t committed yet. Even if I was entertaining conspiracy theories, that whole thing sounds like a complicated undertaking for an office that is obviously swamped already. I also don’t get the feeling admissions is a very computerized operation. While I don’t think they are hunched over their desks dipping quill pens into inkwells, I have gotten the impression it was a very hands on process from posts here and from my own interaction with the office. </p>
<p>I called them when my daughter was an applicant two years ago and her transcript wasn’t showing as being received on MyUm, now replaced by Canelink. There were little checkmarks that were supposed to appear when required materials had been received and it was still missing that high school transcript checkmark a month after we’d hoped it should have arrived. Her high school was very old school and did everything manually, requiring students to fill out a form for each college with the mailing address and bring $3 in cash to pay for each transcript. There may even have been a required pre-addressed stamped envelope involved as well. So we were worried the school hadn’t actually sent the transcript and when I called the admissions to check, the very helpful woman I spoke to asked me to hold on for a minute while she took a look around, returned to the phone to say she had found it “it was right here in the basket!” and proceeded to enter it on the computer while I waited! Then she asked me to hit refresh to make sure it showed up as received on MyUM. I thought that was really sweet and left me with the impression that the school was a very personal place, where people kept paperwork in baskets and phone calls fixed problems, very much the opposite of our highly bureaucratic flagship, which my son had attended. That kind of positive impression is so important since admissions is the first contact students and parents usually have with a college. That’s why this year’s issues with scholarship weekend invites and communication is so disheartening.</p>
<p>Thank you for the replies!</p>