Gaming the housing lottery on pure will and that one week spent on game theory in Intro to Economics.

For many Barnard Housing Lottery newbies, the past two weeks have been wracked with anxiety, frustration, and in some cases exalting relief or intense disappointment.

Last Tuesday, March 19, I entered into the four-suite housing lottery with a group of rising sophomores, a nightmare situation in and of itself. To preface, Barnard Residential Life puts together a spreadsheet that essentially shows which suites have been taken and which are still available on the housing day itself, as well as spreadsheets showing which suites were taken by each group in previous years, organized by suite sizes and lottery numbers. Before the lottery had opened, my suitemates and I, knowing our lottery time would likely be abysmally late in the day as mere rising sophomores, analyzed, scanned, and calculated various probabilities based on previous years’ lottery outcomes.

Some calculations predicted we would be the very last to choose a suite, and others predicted we wouldn’t get a suite at all. When the email was sent out announcing lottery numbers, it was as expected: we had been assigned a terrible number, even for sophomores. We would need more than a handful of people to drop the four-suite lottery for us to get a chance at finding housing, and even then would be amongst the last to choose. Significantly less enthused about our prospects, we spent Monday evening running and rerunning the numbers, despairing as our odds shrank even more. There was nothing that could be done. By Tuesday morning, all we could do was leave it up to fate.

Throughout the day on Tuesday, I feverishly reloaded my Google Sheets app, watching as suites were eaten up. First, the suites of singles disappeared, gobbled up by rising seniors. The little cells on my tiny phone screen turned red with every refresh of the page, flashing like fire alarms. Then the suites with combinations of doubles and singles. No one, unlike in previous years, seemed to be skipping the four-lottery. The numbers were dwindling. With over twenty lottery groups to go, there were only ten suites left.

Here’s where the mind games come in.

See, on the various Google Sheets so kindly put together by Residential Life, everyone can see which suites have been taken, which ones are left, and the seniority of the group they were taken by. From this limited information about choices that have already been made, one can make assumptions or projections about future choices other groups might make. Since no one seemed to be skipping this lottery round, and everyone else could see this information, those not guaranteed a suite were placed in an even more dicey position, for if the pattern of no skipping held, no one with later lottery times would be able to get a suite. Such uncertainty would inevitably lead to a scramble for the remaining groups to find additional members for the fast-approaching five and six lottery rounds, completely foregoing the high likelihood of not getting a four-person suite at all and trying in another round.

We could further narrow the possible outcomes by looking at the grade level of the groups left to choose. Generally, groups made up of juniors and seniors would rather get suites full of singles, while sophomore groups are typically more content to settle for doubles. Given junior and senior group seniority, if they did not get their preferred single-filled suites this round, they would be nearly guaranteed better accommodations in the other lottery rounds. As the suites with singles dwindled, we could assume that the remaining upperclassmen groups would skip and opt for the next round, thus eliminating additional groups that could take up the few remaining four-person suites.

At this point, by eliminating possible five and six-person groups as well as remaining upperclassmen groups, our chances appeared to be better. However, like all guesses and conjectures, we could not be sure.

As predicted, upperclassmen groups began to skip more frequently, and later time slot groups began to skip as their contingency plans became reality. But the numbers still dwindled, and the available suits shrank to an uncomfortably small amount.

It was a battle of wills and wits. Who would crack and form a five or six-person group, and who would stick it out under the slim chance that enough groups would skip their lottery time? Who else had made those calculations and informed their choices with the outcome?

Just as we did twenty-four hours before, we chose to have faith in the process and wait it out, rather than completely give up.

By giving students access to these spreadsheets—years of information and statistics, as well as live updated information as the lottery itself occurs—both chaos and assurance can ensue. These Google Sheets can reinforce patterns about housing, as students might follow similar patterns from previous years. Students can be sure of their place in the lottery and make appropriate rankings of their potential options. Or, students may become more unsure of their options, as the accumulation of individual groups’ decisions may not exactly reflect the patterns established in previous years.

There will always be a significant amount of uncertainty when entering the housing lottery. Concessions will have to be made. Though these Google Sheets provide essential information to those navigating the lottery system, they can create unrealistic expectations and initiate a scramble for other options, which is what occurred this year. Or, they can aid in the decision-making process, clearing up confusion about available choices based on grade, suite size, and lottery number. At the end of the day, these spreadsheets offer a means to mitigate anxiety about the housing process, even if they don’t always work, in the face of an extremely unpredictable process wherein individuals may not act in accordance with expectations.

Google Sheets via Author