<p>D (sophomore) is ready for a single room next year. Unfortunately, her Green St. house is tiny and the number of single rooms is easily exceeded by the rising juniors plus seniors, even if some of the former do study abroad first term. She is willing to move out, preferably to another Green St. or Elm St. house. From what I understand, she will have access to a list of houses with singles and information on how many juniors and seniors there are. Will it be straightforward to find a single? How well does this work out in practice? She doesn't want to end up with a double elsewhere. Any advice? Thanks!</p>
<p>From the Housing website:</p>
<p>“If you would like to live in another house other than the one you currently live in, select this option. You will be entered into the Housing Lottery and (later) assigned a lottery number. Then come back to BannerWeb between March 9th and March 21th to continue in the lottery process by completing your House Choice Form; at that time you will find out your lottery number and house quotas for each house.”</p>
<p>So it looks like she’ll have to choose whether she’s staying or leaving her house before she can see the quotas for other houses.</p>
<p>Ugh. The Housing Lottery. Those words alone can inspire fear and loathing in a Smithies heart. </p>
<p>First she has to enter the housing lottery, then she’ll have to do room selection. If I remember right, first the rising juniors staying in the house will have their pick, then the juniors just moving in, before the choice goes down to the seniors. It helps if you’re a junior because most houses have fewer of those (since most of the juniors will be away and/or abroad). But really, there’s no way to handle it risk-free. In practice, housing lottery and room selection are always a huge mess and a bit of a nightmare. You just have to bear with it, and thank the Lord that your seniority insulates you from the worst of it. As a junior, she has pretty good chance of getting a single. Whether it’s large or small, or in a house she wants or not, or whether the whole thing ends up for the right, well… in the words of one of my favorite singers “If God gave me a vision, would I never have reason to use my faith?”</p>
<p>S&P they have changed the process so that those moving into a house have the same priority (based on lottery number of course) as those who already live there. Getting a single as a junior shouldn’t be a problem in almost all of the houses.</p>
<p>Sounds stressful but worth trying. S&P, could you clarify…do rising juniors pick out rooms before or after seniors? I would have guessed that seniors have first choice. Also, are there some Green/Elm St houses that have more singles than others? Should she avoid disappointment and chose King/Scales in the Quad?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Upbeat, seniors choose first, then juniors, then sophomores. Different houses do have more singles than others, but any quad house would guarantee a single for a junior (as do many other houses on campus). If you go to the housing website, the page for each house posts how many singles, doubles, and tripes it has.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t necessarily de-camp all the way to the Quad out of fear that the Green Street houses won’t have space. For one thing, most of her friends won’t be moving, so there’s no point in isolating herself by going all the way up to the Quad. As a junior, she will have a good chance either on Green street or on Center Campus, depending on house and lottery number. Good luck!</p>
<p>King/Scales is the closest to the main campus in the quad so it would be a good alternative if you can’t find a single anywhere else on Green St or Center Campus. </p>
<p>Also if Liz Hait tries to sell you that single in Gillett, I wouldn’t take it. For some reason, everyone’s been refusing that room…</p>
<p>Poor Liz Hait. She probably has the worst job on campus.</p>
<p>I feel your D’s pain. Haven/Wes has basically no singles. Sad :(</p>
<p>Yeah, and that’s such a nice place to live! Some girls were kind of loud in there though.</p>
<p>They’re loud on occasion, but nothing too terrible.
I’m very happy there</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, everyone currently living in a house is guaranteed a room for the following year. A certain minimum number of rooms are reserved for incoming first years. Because of these numbers, most students know, more or less, how many rooms will be available in their houses for upperclass women who don’t currently live there. For instance, one year my D knew that no rooms were going to be available in her house for those who wanted to move in. Your D should find out these numbers from the other houses she’d like to live in to determine her chances at the other houses. Of course, she won’t know about singles specifically. But if a house has a lot of graduating seniors, she has a better chance.</p>
<p>Well actually, when I was there some people weren’t guaranteed for a while. Some even had to live in the living room! Isn’t that ridiculous!?</p>
<p>^ I don’t think anyone actually had to live in the living room. Some of the buildings have small apartments on the first floor that they used to rent out to faculty (and sometimes still do). Some people were not assigned housing and had to live in those apartments, which open up on to the living room, while the school figured out what rooms would be available where, but I don’t think anyone actually lived in the living (like sleeping on the couches).</p>
<p>Actually at the beginning of the fall semester (last semester) in my daughter’s house (Jordan) there were girls sleeping on the sofas of the common rooms. It was apparently temporary but certainly difficult for those girls.</p>
<p>And those girls CHOSE to stay in temporary housing. (Maybe not for the first month, but past that) I know there are lots of open doubles on campus and I know of a few girls who chose to stay in big studies rather than move accross campus. HOwever, Res Life kicked everyone out of temp housing into permanent housing at the end of the semester.</p>
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I remember that year. Smith had a bump in their admissions yield, more students choosing to enroll than they had forecast. What’s worse, sleeping in the living room or telling a few dozen students, “Oops! You can’t enroll here after all.”</p>
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<p>Oh, how true. When I was a rising sophomore, all the rising juniors were in doubles and some of the seniors were in doubles too, due to an error in the housing office. We had 8 first-years that year because housing accidentally let too many new-to-the-house seniors move into the house (they forgot to account for everyone who was returning from abroad when they let new people in).</p>
<p>All’s well. I wanted to update everyone on the ‘single for junior’ situation. D first put in a transfer request, then when room selection came up, it turned out that there were zero rooms available on Green Street! So much for staying in the same area of campus. There were a small handful (3-4) rooms each in some Elm and Center campus houses. None in King/Scales but a few scattered rooms available around the Quad. The exception was Cutter/Ziskind: these boasted about a dozen rooms open for transfer. She tried for Elm and but ended up with a single in a Quad house. She seems happy…she gets a change of scene (possibly drastic), more exercise walking to and from town/classes, and (finally) a room to call her own!</p>