We are reaching out to all students with some exciting and important news!  Spring Housing Selection is getting a revamp that will make the process easier, clearer, and more transparent for students.  Moving forward, housing selection will be organized by class-year only – the current system is by class year and housing type.  As an example, this will mean that Seniors will all select housing in the same day, regardless of what room sizes they are looking for.  The basic portal process will remain mostly the same, though simplified.  You will still make an application, create your group, receive a randomized timeslot where you can start selection, and select housing!  We are also aiming to maximize the agency that students have over their housing selection, by allowing students to make changes to their groups during selection and providing much more accessible information before and during selection including a housing selection guide with stats from previous selections, more building characteristics information on HouseCat, and a constantly updated list of what is still available that students can check without needing to be in the portal.  

In an effort to make these improvements to the system, we are stepping away from another process that is not as popular or impactful as it used to be.  We will be pausing the Theme Housing option for this coming academic year so that we can evaluate this program, gather student input, and determine how to move forward with this process.  Additionally, housing options for group sizes will be 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 for the coming academic year.  We will no longer have 8s as we heard from students that while they liked them theoretically, groups that large were difficult to manage for selection and afterwards, and we have seen them decline in popularity.  

These changes were driven by an extensive evaluation of our process, benchmarking with other institutions, and multiple forms of student feedback including focus groups and conversations with many students before, during, and after the selection process.  We are thrilled to be moving forward with changes that simplify the process and that students want to see!

Much more detailed information will be coming in the Spring Semester including many info sessions, guides, and a new selection website (LINK TEMP WEBSITE HERE).  In the meantime, look out for an email coming next week that outlines preparing for Winter Break (wow its that time of the year already?!).  Have a wonderful rest of your week!

Best,

Danielle & the ResLife Team!