What’s the special thing about Chestnut residence? are there generally some “more” or “less” desirable residences?
This whole thing seems really confusing. Any experts willing to share their wisdom?
Chestnut is a converted hotel. I would expect the heating and A/C systems to be much better than the college residences, some of which are really ancient. Chestnut rooms have a private bath, which other residence rooms definitely don’t have. There’s other features too. https://www.chestnut.utoronto.ca/home/student-residence/
Chestnut is not actually on campus, which is the biggest complaint I’ve heard about it. What college did you apply to, as that will determine what residence options you have.
I’m in engsci. I also got into CS for St. George which is offering me only innis and chestnut, but I expect to be doing ES should I choose to enroll, which allows me to rank all the residences afaik
Not your major, your college. As in Trinity, Vic, St Mike’s, etc? Unless something has changed recently, your college choice will determine your residence options.
Innis for CS, per my last post.
And I don’t think engineering students are apart of a college 
I am showing my ignorance so please educate me. DD got an admission offer to Engineering. On her MyRes page she can rank 8 different colleges (which I assume are residence halls). Are these colleges specific to certain majors - I know a few of them say that space for Engineering students is limited (why?) but other than that can anyone choose to live in any of the colleges?
If you applied to artsci on UTSG, you had to rank a choice of college and that determines what residency options you have since your part of that college. I applied CS for artsci and got my first choice, Innis. So if I enroll in the CS program I have to do either chestnut or innis.
But for engineering you’re not part of a college and many of the colleges host a small number of engineers that yo ucan apply for.