19 days until freshman students move in and still no word about dorms (unless you know you are in QC or Manresa), room assignments or roommates. I have read the older threads and I know it is like this every year, but that just means there has been no effort to improve this process for years. There is really no excuse for this extreme delay and no explanation has been offered. Literally EVERY other freshman I know at EVERY other college or university has this information by now, and most of them have had it for weeks.
We just got the dorm assignment yesterday and the student won’t know about the roommate until move-in day.
What is so important?
Waiting for this information is a source of anxiety for both students and parents. Will you have a double or a triple? Will you get your first choice of dorms? Will your roommate have similar interests or habits? If nothing else, knowing this information in advance is a convenience that allows for communication between future roommates so they can begin to get to know each other and coordinate some of their planning. Imagine buying a TV or refrigerator and transporting it to campus only to learn that the roommate also bought and brought the same appliances.
Every other school provides this information by late July if not sooner. Why can’t Fordham?
It seems like the solution would be to wait on the big purchases until move-in day.
I’m not even sure the rest of the stuff ranks as a ‘convenience’. If someone was as anxious about the perceived difference between a double or a triple or their future roommates habits as they are about simply knowing, it seems like they could get worked up into quite a tizzy over those things by the time they moved in.
And, I don’t think it has been established that Fordham is the only one not doing it.
Thanks for the perspective, JustOneDad. I guess that is the wisdom that comes after more than 4100 posts on CC.
No prob. I hoped putting it in perspective could allay some of the anxiety you feel about something that appears to be out of your hands to begin with.
Its vexing and frustrating, yes. But in consideration of the huge increase in volume of applications from 15,000 to 42,000 over the last 8-10 years, and then having a large number say “yes” to the offer, it puts extreme pressure on the ResLife folks to find a home for everyone and be fair. They dont know until May how many are coming and as the numbers increase it causes a huge problem for them. Its not a question of being lazy or uncaring, its a real problem of finding a room for everyone and what triples will fit and what wont. Hang in there.
As for matching kids with interests they also do their best off of the applications they have.
Be prepared for dorm drama. Its unavoidable and a lot of tolerance and maturity is needed to acclimate to college life, the pressure of the workload and being away from home. Freshmen year is the worst for this and to the extent you can brace and breathe and roll with it the better off everyone will be.
Its a great school. Food quality is much improved and overall life on campus is very good. Best of luck.
I agree that it would be thoughtful to give students more advance notice. As noted by the OP, this has consistently been an negative with Fordham. Certainly it isn’t a “life or death” thing, but it is frustrating. I remember when all of my friends got their housing information, were excitedly contacting their roommates etc. and I did not hear from Fordham until way later.
There are inherent inconveniences in not having more advance notice. Being able to shop in advance (instead of doing big purchases on move in day as suggested by JustOneDad) is useful – especially for those who wish to shop around for the best price on items ($ is an issue for many incoming freshman), or seek out a specific item instead of being almost forced into buying what can be found close to campus on move in day etc. Freshman move-in is stressful enough (although Fordham does an amazing job in that regard) without knowing you have to still shop for some big items.
In any event, OP just take a deep breath and wait for the housing information to come. There is still plenty of time to get organized and things always seem to work out in the end. The bottom line is Fordham is a great school and I hope you have a wonderful experience.
Dear @DadUndaunted, Welcome to the “Ramily”! Let me give you a typical catchphrase that you will learn to use when this happens. And it’s often. It’s “That’s Fordham!”
When my daughter was a freshman two years ago, all her friends going to other colleges had their rooms assignments, room mate info, classes and ID Cards. She had nothing. She was horrified that SUNYs and CUNYs had their act together and not Fordham. Everyone was shopping and getting excited about their college experience. And here we were, this time of year and NOTHING. Until about a week or so before. Then the wild dash to buy stuff (most sales and good stuff were done by then) but we had already gotten the basics, sheets, towels, bedding stuff. So she just had to coordinate with the future roomie to get stuff. Just an FYI-there is a TJ Maxx across the street and a Target on West 225th Street (it’s on the #9 bus line-about 15 minutes away depending on traffic—hey I should know—this was my old neighborhood and I wish Target was there when I was growing up!) so you can pick up incidentals there during the year. Burlington is on Webster also for incidentals.
Plus this past year with the huge Freshman class there are over 100 kids in post housing. And from what I understand this incoming Freshman class is bigger than last year’s.
I have not had the “warm and fuzzies” in regards to ResLife. They have a tough job and they aren’t the nicest folk to deal with at times. The one lady I dealt with last year was great. She was sympathetic since my daughter was in post housing and she did her best to place my daughter with her friend but couldn’t and she wound up being in a single across campus from all of her friends. Plus was an added expense to me since she was in single.
I could go on and on about what we’re going through right now with Walsh (“We’re working hard to make it more beautiful” aka ASBESTOS ABATEMENT) and her move in isn’t for another couple of weeks even though I paid for intercession for it to be more convenient for her to commute to Manhattan to her job only to learn she now has to move in on a work day. Something that wasn’t supposed to happen since Intercession move in happened last week but not for those living in Walsh Hall and because of lack of communication from Fordham my daughter is in a real bind. That’s Fordham!
I just read on a previous post that you won’t know your room mate until move in? My daughter got that info with her room assignment and she was able to email her future room mate and coordinate stuff. This was a week before move in.
You might want to see what kind of a data plan you have for your phone also. You might want to increase it since Fordham has the habit of adding kids and not bandwidth and the wifi is going to fail a lot during finals. We’ve come very close to going over our 8G plan during finals.
Good luck and I hope you get info soon.
What’s “post housing”?
@SewrTX - “Post Housing” or as it also known as “Post-Lotto” is when there are no rooms remaining during the room selection process in the spring for fall housing. It happens every year.
When room selection happens in the spring for fall housing, they run out of rooms. Then you wait all summer for your fall housing assignment. They do their best to keep room mate requests together. This year there are over 100 kids in post lotto. They guarantee housing so during the summer, kids withdraw or transfer out so rooms do open up bit by bit. The “sophomore” housing is usually O’Hare, Tierney and Finlay along with the off campus university run housing. Junior/Senior housing are Walsh and Campbell, Salice-Conley. This past spring because of the HUGE freshman class they opened up Walsh for selection for rising sophomores, so that meant a smaller selection for rising juniors. Because my daughter was in post lotto the year before she was suppose to get a premium time slot but she didn’t. She emailed ResLife about it and they bumped her up a few hours. She was very very lucky. So she was the one who got to choose the room because her other room mates had early/late afternoon time slots and rooms are always gone by 10AM. There are juniors who had to get rooms this fall in O’Hare because rooms were gone everywhere else.
The person I’m dealing with right now in ResLife has been great. They really have a stressful job.