This year, Residence Life and Housing gave more control to students to decide their housing situation for the coming year and hoped that a new platform would make the process easier.

 The housing lottery took place between April 14 and 21, first for rising seniors, then rising juniors, then for rising sophomores. All steps for housing selection were completed in the eRezLife portal, an updated version of previous year’s housing portal.

While mostly the same, students are being given more control over the housing selection process. “Bottom line, rules of the lottery stay the same, but the interface and student user experience has been upgraded,” said Sarah Leahy, Associate Director for Campus Life.

This year, students were encouraged to make multiple different roommate groups to prepare for differing outcomes when their selection time came. Instead of having to create new groups at the last minute if plans don’t go the way they should, there can be other roommate groups that students had created beforehand.

While not necessarily new, planning was the name of the game this year. Group leaders would be the person with the best lottery time, according to Residence life and Housing. Residence Life and Housing has stressed the point that students should familiarize themselves with the housing portal so that they are prepared when the time for them to select housing comes up.

Room availability updates were live in real-time during the housing lottery process so that students could see which spaces had been taken and which had not been. Additionally, students could search for rooms in far more detail in comparison to other years. This time students would be able to apply search filters to find rooms that met their needs. Previously, it was more difficult to obtain specific information about dorm rooms available and the amenities offered with a room, but the search feature this year improves with this feature. Availability updates were available April 14 through 21.

Rising seniors should know that they are not guaranteed an apartment next year. Rising juniors won’t be able to be in an apartment next year and will stay in traditional dorms or in suites. In addition, there were no predicted singles available for rising juniors or for rising sophomores as it is expected that they will all be used by rising seniors. Essentially, similar to previous years, variation in housing type is limited, with the most limited types being made available for students based on seniority.