27 Comments
We’ve slowly been gearing up for this coming housing season by covering the more colorful aspects of the housing process. Alas, the time draws nigh when you will be forced to finally make your housing choice official. Registration begins on February 29th and closes March 8th. Below, we’ve distilled a cursory overview of the entire housing process. Continue to ask questions in the comments, and feel free to share any nuggets of wisdom, upperclassmen.
- Registration (Feb. 29th) Everyone registers. You can either do Suite Selection with 1 to 7 other people or go straight to General Selection. If you opt for Suite Selection, you get to participate in General Selection with the same lottery number if you decide not to make a room choice during Suite Selection or if there is no suite available for your group size. Each group must have a person picked as the “coordinator” to act as a point person.
- Numbers (Mar. 21st): Lottery and priority numbers are assigned. Each group (Suite) or person (General) is assigned a priority number and a lottery number. Priority: 10 = rising sophomore, 20 = rising junior, 30 = rising senior (based on the semester you started at Columbia, not on your current standing). For a group, the group priority is the average of all the group members’ priorities (i.e. a group of 2 sophomores and 2 juniors would have a priority number of 15). Lottery numbers are assigned to each group in Suite Selection and each individual in General Selection at random from 1-3000. They are independent of priority numbers.
- Appointment Times (Mar. 26th): Your Suite Selection appointments times are then assigned first by priority number then by lottery number. So, ignoring mixed class groups, all seniors pick before all juniors, who pick before all sophomores. After you get your appointment times, you’re locked in and have to wait until the actual Suite Selection process. Read Bwog every day during Suite Selection for our updates about the remaining suites available.
- Regrouping (Apr. 2-10): At the end of their respective class-based priority appointment times (end of all 30-point groups, and then end of all 20-point groups), seniors and juniors may regroup with other class members to form new configurations with new randomly-assigned lottery numbers valid only for the regroup process. If a group still fails to select a suite, they then fall to General Selection with their original priority and lottery number. At the end of the 10-point priority appointment times, 10-point groups may split into group of two to pick into corridor doubles. Otherwise, they also drop to General Selection.
- General Selection (Apr. 18-30): After the hullabaloo of Suite Selection, General Selection appointment times are posted. General Selection is done online, not in person. How appropriate.
- The Dregs (May 1st): After selection is over, some sophomores will be left without a room. If you did not get assigned a room, you go on a wait list and get whatever is left over after Housing makes final assignments. If you do not like your room selection, you may apply for summer transfer. The people who apply for summer transfer get to pick again in reverse-Lottery number order.
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27 Comments
@Anonymous What’s the deal with Schapiro’s 17th floor? are those room available during General Selection?
@Anonymous When Sophomore pair-up happens (as it probably will for any 4+ group), what “corridor doubles” options are available hypothetically speaking, including the ones that are unavailable to a Sophomore because of the lottery alone?
@Anonymous b/c I fired a question over to housing and they said that a group of 4 wouldn’t be able to split into a Watt Double (sophomores)
@Anonymous “If your group does not select a suite in Suite Selection, your group may opt to stay together and select rooms in General Selection with the same appointment time, or your group may opt to break apart and select rooms in General Selection with appointment times based on your individual point values and lottery number.”
I was under the impression that when you drop from Suite to General Selection, everyone has the same lottery number. Which made me confused about the above statement– wouldn’t we have the same appointment time anyway because we would automatically have the same number?
@Anonymous best sophomore option? mcbain? nussbaum?
@Anonymous Wow, Bwog has been really good about answering these questions, huh?
@freshman okay, so my 6 friends and i are going for suite selection, but there are 7 of us and if we can’t get singles, one of us (me) is left without a roommate. i’m not mad about it, i just don’t know how to avoid being in a blind double. i thought a wien single (we’re trying to pick onto the same floor in wien) was totally possible for a rising sophomore. if we can’t pick into wien and are forced into something like mcbain, how do i register? should i just ditch the group and try to find a single person to go in with so i have a guaranteed roommate and hope i can live near my friends?
also, if i find said person to go into a suite with, what’s the cutoff for wien walk-through doubles?
@Anonymous Does each person in a suite get an individual lottery number then the highest of the numbers becomes the groups number?
@Anonymous you have to wait until next year and file a form that says you are unhappy with your current situation. From there, it’s a crapshoot.
@freshman How can you squeeze your way into the LLC if you didn’t apply?
@Study Abroad Hopeful As a Columbia applicant to Reid Hall with a high GPA and straight As in French I would be surprised if I got rejected, but how does this work if we have a pending study abroad application in?
@Barnard can I please have a side-by-side timeline of barnard housing vs columbia housing process? it would be helpful for those applying to their respective others’ housing lottery. gracias!
@Matt, Barnard Res Life Barnard Room Selection Registration ends one day *earlier* than CU Registration at 1pm on Wed, Feb 7.
But unlike CU’s registration, everyone registers at Barnard as an individual and you have the flexibility to join or change groups up until you select housing. It’s just important to make sure that you *do* register between 1pm Feb 29 – 1pm Mar 7, so you don’t miss out on getting a lottery number.
Barnard Lottery Number are announced at 1pm on Mon, Mar 19 (two days before CU). Rising-Seniors will get their appointment times that day, rising-Juniors & Sophomores will get their appointment times a few days later (see http://barnard.edu/reslife/roomselection/calendar#Selection).
Rising-Seniors will pick on Fri, Mar 23. Rising-Juniors pick on Tue, Mar 27. Rising-Sophomores pick on Fri, Mar 30.
All the Selection Days will have taken place at Barnard before CU Suite Selection starts. So any Barnard student who registers as part of a group for CU Room Selection is definitely encouraged to register for Barnard Room Selection as a backup (see http://barnard.edu/reslife/roomselection/guide#columbia_suite_selection).
All the info about Barnard Room Selection is available online at http://barnard.edu/reslife/roomselection/. There will be information sessions this Wed, Thurs, Friday, and next Tuesday (http://barnard.edu/reslife/roomselection/calendar#Info_Sessions).
@sophomore waitlist landed in woodbridge – oh yeahhh
@Anonymous For a rising junior group of two that both want singles, would an appropriate goal be a low demand Woodbridge suite with Broadway or Shapiro singles as backup? Is Woodbridge likely to be more or less popular this year?
Also thanksbwogyoudabest
@seas 14 (13?) also what if you took time off after you started here?
@seas 14 (13?) that was supposed to be a reply to transfer priority
@i would very much like to do this as well
@I loled at the General Selection quip. And then I cried a little inside.
@cc'12 Done with this shit
@Anonymous What additional steps need to be taken to take advantage of the gender-neutral option?
@Alex Same process as everyone else.
http://housingservices.columbia.edu/content/open-housing-faqs
@Say Watt? Watt isn’t included? It’s not an upperclassmen dorm?
@Transfer Priority? “[priority numbers are] based on the semester you started at Columbia, not on your current standing.”
Is that supposed to include transfer students as well, or are we essentially going off our current standing? Otherwise, it sounds like all the new soph and junior transfers would be considered with freshmen…
@Anonymous transfers get the priority of the year they are in school, regardless of when they started at columbia. I think the statement in the article only applies to regular columbia students graduating in 3yrs.
@rising senior for regrouping, do all rising-senior groups pick after all 30-point appointment times or after 30- AND 20- point appointment times?
@Alex Regrouping takes place by class, so that means seniors get to regroup before all juniors.