<p>Many outsiders complained about WUSTL reducing the number of acceptances starting this year, but that has to be done immediately since housing is already a problem for most of the class 2010.
Only a few lucky ones would live where they wanted to live, many had to lower their expectations, and many more are still in limbo, they do not know where they will live next semester and they have to go to finals worrying about that.
I always defended WUSTL because I love the school and I'm happy to have my kids there, but I found something I don't like, and that's the way Residential Life is treating the students this year.
Good luck to all the kids that haven't heard yet the decisions.</p>
<p>I will second that post: WashU has been excessively generous to me in every other way imaginable, but I felt very wronged by ResLife and that will most likely seal the deal for my other top choice.</p>
<p>brand, unconfuse me.....I can't remember if you're choosing between wustl and nu or emory. Having said that, and I've been to all three schools several times. I don't know what res life did or didn't, but washu has (by far) the best dorm setup that I've ever seen for underclassmen. You're going to be an entering freshman, so last year's scenario should really not be affecting your decision at this point.</p>
<p>no I'm an entering transfer student that applied to WUSTL, UT, Wesleyan, and NYU. It will probably come down to Wes and WUSTL, but this has made my choice easier.</p>
<p>ResLife really hasn't had any issue with assigning people to where they want to live this year - It seems like the normal complaints to me. Last year they had more people request 4 person suites than 6 person suites and had to split up some suites, but in my opinion, 6 person suites are better (balcony + larger common room).</p>
<p>They do have a problem this year, most of the 2nd round applicants don't have housing yet and they said they should have it by April 24th. They also accepted that they will have to make many changes during summer, and many kids would have to be move around so no one in South 40 would have for sure the dorm already assigned. Last year they didn't have problems because there weren't so many in the freshman class and many seniors accepted to live off campus with all the freebies they received for that (free Internet, free phone, and more)
I just hope they don't accept more than the 1300 they said they would accept this year, or next year we will better start house hunting after the Holidays</p>
<p>Yeah....I know so many people without housing currently. Apparently there are approx 100 or more groupings without housing yet. I'm just really glad that I did rescollege round and already have a place to live. Good luck to the rest of you!</p>
<p>Eleph - what is rescollege vs what Cressmom's son is doing for housing? Having a daughter who will be a freshman next year causes me to worry about this housing issue.</p>
<p>So, there are different rescolleges at WashU. Each one is a group of buildings (examples: Ruby/Umrath, Liggett/Koenig, HIGE). Throughout the year there are numerous competitions/special events put on by the various rescolleges (Examples: Rescollege Olympics, Rescollege Recyclemania, study breaks, fieldtrips, etc). </p>
<p>In terms of housing selection:
If everyone in your housing group (of either 4 or 6, or possibly 8) is currently in the same Rescollege as you, you can do the rescollege round. You are assigned separate lottery numbers than the lottery numbers given out by reslife. You can form petitions for housing (basically, you just list everyone in your group, and you hand in your contracts for next year). Then they average the rescollege lottery numbers of everyone in your group, and you're given a pick-order. They have a night (or afternoon) (much before housing selection for the non-rescollege rounds begin) where you get to pick your room for the next year. They cap the percentage of rooms in buildings that can be filled by rescollege round at 80%, although, at least in my rescollege, there were less than 20 groups that did the round, so everyone was able to get housing.
The other housing rounds involve getting a group together of 4 or six, and the whole process is online. I think you get to rank a grouping of places you would like to live. The deadline for that wasn't until quite a while after the rescollege round housing was officially decided. Then, the reslife office tried putting everyone in housing based on what they had put down on their form (in an order determined by the averaging of the reslife lottery numbers).
Here the disadvantages are:
*people tend to have difficulty finding the perfect group of 4 or 6/it keeps on changing at the last minute (could also be a problem rescollege-round as well)
*many many more people participate in the general reslife round, so having a bad lottery number actually means something. (If you have a bad rescollege lottery number, not a lot of people participate in rescollege round, so you're still pretty high up on the list, and are pretty much guaranteed a spot in the rescollege)</p>
<p>So I guess the overall message is: start thinking about who you're going to live with next year around the time of winter break. Try to find people from your rescollege so you can do rescollege round (and therefore totally escape the hazard of not having housing/having your desired group split up)</p>
<p>I hope this rather long-winded post helped explain things more. Also, don't worry about not having housing next year as a freshman. They have taken that into consideration in this year's housing round. Also, like last year, if there happen to be more freshman than spaces, the upperclassmen will get shifted out (like last year) instead of the freshman. But yes, overall message, rescollege round is the best way to go if it is at all possible!</p>
<p>Wow, I hadn't heard that there were so many issues with housing next year. My current freshman son was complaining that his group got a six person suite in Park that wasn't going to have a common area. After reading this, I'm going to tell him to stop complaining!</p>