<p>My D is a freshman, and is wondering about housing for next year. She said that off campus housing contracts have to be signed in October, but she is not yet sure if she wants to live on campus again or not. If she wants to live with/close to a group of friends, how can they do that with the lottery system? Are there singles on West, and what are the chances of getting them? If you wait to see what you can get through the lottery and then get a bad time slot, are there still apartments left in collegetown at that point? Any insight would be appreciated! Thanks!</p>
<p>Sophomore parent here.</p>
<p>Your freshman, and every other freshman, is in a difficult situation because the lottery comes late and off-campus housing in good locations is usually rented early. But there's also another thing to think about: going Greek.</p>
<p>Your daughter should consider whether or not there is any chance that she may want to join a sorority. If she does join one, she would almost certainly be expected to live in the sorority house as a sophomore. Therefore, signing an apartment lease in the fall is a bad idea for people who have any interest in Greek life. Sorority (and fraternity) rush doesn't take place until just before classes start in the second semester.</p>
<p>Most sophomores who don't go Greek do go into the housing lottery, mostly because in October or November, they hadn't yet established a group of friends whom they would want to rent an apartment with. Also, a lot of people want to live in the West Campus houses, which are exceedingly popular with sophomores. As a sophomore, your daughter is guaranteed housing. What she is not guaranteed is that she can live with her friends, even if they form a blocking group together (blocking groups may have to break up if groups of adjacent rooms are no longer available). Your daughter could end up in a different dorm from her friends. She could end up having to share a room with a stranger. She could even end up in a program house that she didn't intend to join, if that house happens to have extra rooms available. (Leftover rooms in program houses are included in the lottery and are often the last rooms to be taken.) These things are not disasters, however. They happen to sophomores every year, and everybody manages to survive.</p>
<p>My daughter got a terrible lottery time slot. She wanted West Campus, and she wanted a single, but all the rooms in West Campus were gone by that time, and the only singles available were in Ujamaa, which did not appeal to her. She ended up living in a double in Cascadilla with a random roommate (who turned out to be nice, as it happens), while most of her friends ended up in various West Campus houses. But she and her friends still do things together, and my daughter can even eat with her friends in the West Campus dining halls if she wants to. (Oddly, it's the people in the good dorms who have the restrictive dining plan; everybody else has lots of dining options, including signing up for no dining plan at all and simply paying cash for every meal.) </p>
<p>If my daughter had wanted to, she could have refused to sign her housing contract and gone off-campus instead. There were still places available at that time, but they were mostly undesirable ones. Most of what's available off-campus at the time of the housing lottery either 1) is inconveniently located or 2) consists of a room in an apartment occupied by a group of people who need one more roommate (not a great situation because the other people all know each other and the new roommate doesn't). In her opinion, Cascadilla was the better option.</p>
<p>Thanks Marian! She really has NO interest in greek life. I think she should keep an open mind about it, but she INSISTS she has no interest and I'm not going to push it, because I never would have imagined her as a sorority girl anyway. She's made some nice friends in her hall already. Some are talking about rushing, and some are not. If a group of her friends wants to get an apartment, is that a good idea for sophomores? Should she sign a lease this fall? I would rather she live on West, but she has a great single now and I think she strongly prefers a single again for next year.</p>
<p>If she gets and apartment with a group, are most of them set up as single rooms in an apartment? Can she still be on a meal plan, use the gym, and enjoy the other perks that come along with living on campus?</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
<p>My daughter had no interest in Greek life, either, mostly because she has no interest in alcohol, which seems to play a rather large role in Greek life.</p>
<p>I don't think it's a bad idea for a sophomore to live off-campus, necessarily, but I will tell you, from my son's experience at another university, that people living off-campus do not tend to make new friends where they live as easily as those living on-campus do. My son spent his junior and senior years in an off-campus apartment building and says that he never met anyone there; he interacted only with the people in his own apartment and with friends that he met in other contexts. He was glad that he had stayed on campus his second year (even though he, like his sister, got screwed in the housing lottery and ended up living far away from his friends). He met a lot of new people in his sophomore dorm and enjoyed their company. By junior year, he had a large social circle and was more ready to live off-campus.</p>
<p>People who live off-campus at Cornell can still be on a meal plan, but as far as I know, most of them don't do this -- or if they do, they choose a minimal plan. This is for the purpose of flexibility. A person who is not on a meal plan can still eat in a dining hall if she wants to; she simply pays cash for the meal. But she also has the option of eating in on-campus cash-only facilities (which tend to have more flexible hours than the meal plan dining halls do), eating in places off-campus, or buying food and cooking it herself. </p>
<p>As for the gyms, they are not a perk that comes with living on campus. You have to pay for them regardless of where you live. This is Cornell, remember. There are extra fees for practically everything.</p>
<p>Edited to add: It is my impression that it is much easier to get a single as a freshman than as a sophomore, simply because there are a lot of singles on North Campus, especially in Dickson and Balch.</p>
<p>Thanks again Marian! Very helpful info! My daughter doesn't drink either, but has found a nice group of friends who seem to like the same things she does, so I think she is very lucky! Maybe if she and her hall-mates know that they want to live together next year they should consider off campus housing options soon. I just think the West Campus Housing Initiative sounds great, but I think there's only somewhere around 1800 beds on West, and with around 3000 students per class, the odds of getting something on west, and what you would prefer, seem slim.</p>
<p>Hi . Just read a post about sophomore housing. What is done for the GT transfers as far as housing goes? Do we get the left overs?</p>
<p>transfers are all usually placed in one location, so they can meet other transfers. years ago, there was a whole "transfer center" dorm (which has since been taken down for the new west campus housing). this year, all of the transfers (as far as i know of) are living in the townhouses on north</p>
<p>Marian, your daughter should have just gone on the wait list instead of accepting a room in Cascadilla. There are always room cancellations by people over the summer. She probably could have gotten a single in one of the new west campus buildings.</p>
<p>Many transfers are living on West Campus in Keeton and there is a significant number of transfer students living in the Townhouses on North. Not an ideal situation if you ask me...I was one of the lucky transfers who got to live in the Transfer Center and it's where I met my best friends.</p>
<p>tun, do you recommend trying to find off campus housing for sophomores, or waiting to see what the housing lottery holds? Did Cornell over-enroll this year, and if they did, wouldn't that impact the availability of housing for sophomores?</p>
<p>I would recommend living on campus, because you can block together with 5 of your friends (making it 6 people in a block) and you all go together with whoever has the earliest lottery time. And if you have more than 5 friends, they can start another block, and you can coordinate to make sure you still live near each other. As long as you're all on one campus (west or collegetown), it's pretty easy to see each other. And the West Campus dorms are quite nice.</p>
<p>The apartment thing is another option, but I would advise against for sophomore year, because you just met each other and you don't know if you can really live together that closely yet.</p>
<p>I like living on west campus, so I'd wait for the housing lottery. Climbing up the slope every morning for classes is a mandatory experience for all Cornellians. Now that all five houses are up and running, there should be enough chance to get a room in one of them.</p>
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Marian, your daughter should have just gone on the wait list instead of accepting a room in Cascadilla.
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<p>She probably would have done that if the only rooms left had been those in the program houses. But Cascadilla isn't exactly hell on earth. The location is quite nice, and the lack of a required meal plan could be considered a plus.</p>
<p>My D (a junior) lived off campus sophomore year. She had an apartment in Collegetown with 3 other friends. Each had their own room. We still bought Big Red bucks so that she could eat on campus during the day. We also could have paid for a meal plan, but she did not want one. And yes, you can still use the gym if you pay the required fee, which students living on campus have to pay as well. My D works at the gym (actually, there are several gyms), so she does not have to pay the fee.</p>
<p>This year she lives in a house, with 5 other ladies, further from campus. Each still has an individual room.</p>
<p>I think off campus housing is more comfortable. But you do need to know who you want to live with. Also, beware of Ithaca landlords.</p>
<p>I have a question about transfer students, kind of similar to sammy's. For transfers, is it possible to choose roommates (or block-mates, if that makes sense)? I just have one friend who has a GT and I'm applying regular transfer and we might like to live with or at least in the same housing as each other. I understand the blocking system but since transfers won't know they're accepted until after the lottery (or while the lottery is going on), can we jump on the transfers-only dorms and see if we can room together?</p>
<p>Or better yet, if there's a block that's looking for 2 roommates, how do they usually fill that? Randomly, with an official filing system or do we have the ability to choose?</p>
<p>As transfers..it might be a little harder to request a specific roommate. However..if you're both transfers and you both know you'll be attending Cornell..it might be possible to request your friend as a roomie.</p>
<p>Would that qualify as an ideal Open House question when I go out to for CALS next month? :P</p>
<p>Or perhaps you know a way of going about doing that?</p>