<p>My daughter is currently a freshman at Pitt. She is starting to think about housing for next year. What are some of the more popular choices for sophmores?</p>
<p>DS was in a suite (PA Hall). He enjoyed it there.</p>
<p>Suites are good options. There’s the quad: Bruce, Brackenridge, and McCormick, or upper campus: Panther and PA. These dorms have kitchenettes but no full kitchens, so your D would still need a meal plan.</p>
<p>Ruskin, Bouquet, and Centre Plaza are apartment-style living options. I’ve been in both Ruskin and Bouquet, and they are very nice buildings. And they have kitchens!</p>
<p>Last year I lived in Bruce. It is an older building, but the price was lower than the non-quad options, and the location was great. Based on what I’ve heard from others, though, I would probably recommend Panther, PA, or Ruskin as good choices for sophomore year living.</p>
<p>Bouquet is generally filled with all juniors, but Ruskin is a good mix of sophomores and juniors.</p>
<p>If you’re in the honors college, Forbes-Craig is an apartment style dorm available for sophomores and juniors.</p>
<p>Ruskin is very nice and convenient. Security is good too. The rooms weren’t as large as I had pictured from the floor plans though. My daughter had a single in Towers for sophomore year and enjoyed it.</p>
<p>Tower C (the singles) has been changed to all freshman as of this year.</p>
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I know AwesomeOpposum liked this dorm, but it is REALLY old and noisy. My daughter’s apartment was on the Forbes side, ground level and between the drunks and the traffic, DD thinks she can now sleep through anything.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t want Forbes-Craig. She’s in Ruskin now and loves it. You (or one of your roommates) just need to have a decent lottery number.</p>
<p>My daughter is liking the idea of Ruskin. There are 3 girls so they would be looking for a 3 person room. How low of a lottery number do you think they would need to get this?</p>
<p>Of the three roommates, the lowest number was in the low 900s. When the one with the lowest number logged on, there were only two apartments left. They were lucky to snag one of them.</p>
<p>I think it’s easier to get into Ruskin as a junior, so they can try again next year if they’re not successful this time around.</p>
<p>Couple questions. I know your chance of getting the residence you want depends on having a low lottery number. In what range would a good number be?<br>
Also if a student is applying for apartment style, is it required to go into the application process with the roommates already decided?</p>
<p>I don’t know if one had to specify names of roommates on the application but when the actual bid day came along, the one with the lowest number had to have all of the roommate information (name, student id number) to complete the bid online. Any number under 1000 for a sophomore would be decent. As a sophomore, if you have a higher number - and you’re looking for Ruskin or Bouquet - you are pretty much out of luck.</p>
<p>My son and his friends wanted a suite but didnt have a great lottery number, they are in Brackenridge, much better location than Forbes from his freshman year (but room half the size)</p>
<p>You do need to specify names of roommates when you apply for housing. Basically you turn in the application (with all your names & information) to Panther Central, and then based on your lottery numbers, PC makes up a schedule of when online housing selection will open up for your group. So the better the number, the sooner you will be able to choose housing. (And its based on the best number out of all the roommates.)</p>
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<p>Ruskin gets more and more popular every year. Low hundreds (3-4 hundred?) is a good guarantee generally. My friends had tons of options in the 100-200 range.</p>
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<p>I’d say below 500 would get you into Ruskin, below 1000 is pushing it.</p>
<p>For apartment style you have to have all the names of the students living together. You also have to pick the size of the apartment you want (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) for suites. If you are in a group of 3 and all the 3-bedroom apartments in Ruskin are taken, you cannot split into a group of 2 and a single and take 2 apartments. You are stuck with your choice.</p>
<p>You fill out a form and turn it into Panther Central by a certain date. The person with the lowest lottery number is the “contact” for the group. Sometime later (I don’t remember when) PC releases a huge timesheet of all the people who applied for oncampus apartments. They rank by class, and then lottery number (low number juniors, high number juniors, low number sophomores, high number sophomores). You have a 15-20 minute window (I think) when your contact needs to log onto My.Pitt and select housing. </p>
<p>You won’t know ahead of time what housing is still available, so keep some backups in mind. You also need to know all of your roommates’ names, emails, PeopleSoft Numbers, AND THEIR MEAL PLAN CHOICES (people always forget this one). You pick your housing, put all the information in, and hit the button to accept it.</p>
<p>I didn’t read this entire thread so I’m not sure if any of this has been said already so sorry so sorry if this info is just being repeated.
You have to have a VERY low lottery number as a sophomore to get Bouquet gardens, it is definitey the best “on campus” housing to have so mostly juniors get it. my roommate now had number 94, we wanted one of the new 3-person bouquet apartments but didn’t get it and that’s a really good number. We ended up in Ruskin and it is very nice (but if your D wants a 3 person and they do end up doing Ruskin tell her not to pick an -03 number room like 503 or 203 because those are the smallest 3 person apartments which is what I ended up in because we didn’t know and I wish we had more room as some apartments are much larger.)
Ultimately, if she’s interested, moving off campus is a lot cheaper and a lot of sophomores do it, and if not sophomore year most people end up moving off junior year.
Panther and PA halls are very nice, but only have kitchennetes so you need a meal plan (and let me tell you, you get very sick of market central by the end of freshman year and having your own kitchen is great) and they are up the hill and that walk can be a pain especially once it gets cold but they are much nicer than the suites in the quad.
The quad suites are in Brackenridge, Bruce, and McCormick. These are all pretty big and have kitchennetes (so again, you need a meal plan) and are very conveniently located.
Besides that I ended up with a smaller apartment, I my only other bad thing to say about Ruskin is that it is not really convenient for anything except the cathedral. I may be biased because all my friends live off campus in south oakland, but if you end up with that same situation it’s a real hassle to get to south oakland and even some streets off campus are shorter walk or the same distance as ruskin is to the library and other major class buildings like posvar and david lawrence.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask.</p>
<p>Thanks chocolate5, your information is very helpful. Especially the part about rooms that end in 03. I know room selection starts sometime during the spring semester. Can you tell me when you find out what your lottery number is?</p>
<p>I don’t remember the exact date, but everyone gets an envelope with their lottery number and other information in their campus mailbox on the same day, I think it’s some time in February or March but I’m not sure.</p>