Landing the right roommate, spot in the highrises made easier

Everyone has heard roommate and housing horror stories. Choosing the perfect roommate and room can cause much anxiety if you are not prepared for the process. Fortunately, Residential Services has made several changes this year to improve the room selection process for Penn students.

Finding a new or additional roommate is easier. Residential Services now monitors a private Facebook group — Find a Roommate — where students can advertise and connect with potential roommates. “Students who want to join can request and we’ll verify that they’re an actual student in housing with us, and at that point it’s up to them to use the wall to post for a roommate,” Associate Director for Housing Assignments Lenny Zeiger said.

The second large update to room selection is a new program called Room Selection Room Change. In March, Residential Services will release a form that allows someone to be immediately considered for another room. As soon as the desired room is open, a student will be offered to trade their current room assignment for the open one, without first canceling their current room assignment.

“In past years, the only way someone could get another, better room is by canceling their currently assigned room, which is stressful for someone who wants to know they have something at least,” Zeiger said.

The Room Selection Room Change program will work on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Residential Services has been trying to cater to upperclassmen students who have been in on-campus housing. The hope is to make more desired apartment-style living increasingly available.

Fewer freshmen have been able to live in the high-rise buildings in order to make room for upperclassmen. “We’ve positioned more beds in the high-rise buildings for upperclassmen, because that’s where upperclassmen most want to live,” Zeiger added.

To make more room for upperclassmen, rooms in residential programs will be made more available to students outside of those programs.

“There has been a shift to move some beds out of living programs and make them available to everyone in campus housing,” Zeiger said. Empty beds in programs now also roll over into in-house and inter-house selection if a program cannot fill its available spaces.

The standard room-selection process is split into in-house selection — staying in the same college house — and inter-house selection — moving to a different college house. Students applying for a room through in-house selection can start to choose a room this week.

“For in-house selection, what really matters is where you sit in relation to other people in your house,“ Zeiger said.

“The in-house process is largely points-driven. Students are given points based on the number of semesters they’ve lived in the house, their involvement as well as positions they may hold within the house.”

Seniority and points are mainly given according to the semesters a student has spent in a house, not their year of graduation. For students applying as a group, their point totals are averaged into a group score.

“It is very common for groups of students to all have the same number of points, and that’s when the in-house process becomes randomized,” Zeiger said.

“Points are on a scale from house to house, as each house may assign points differently,” Director of Residential Services John Eckman added. “The longer you live in housing, the better your room selection gets.”

A senior living in the same house for several years, for example, has the best chance of getting that single with an amazing view of Locust Walk.

The inter-house process is based on seniority. The earlier a student’s year of graduation, the earlier they may pick a room for next semester. “Within groups, class levels are also averaged,” Zeiger said. “A group of some sophomores and some juniors will be able to choose a room and a house before a group of all sophomores.”

While there is some priority in inter-house room selection, there is much more randomization among the many sophomore-only groups.

“Because it’s much simpler of a process, there are a lot more ties between groups of students,” Zeiger said. “The vast majority of students going through the inter-house process are rising sophomores, meaning they all have the same position, so their selection times fall to randomization mostly.”

Students wishing to see exactly which rooms are available may use the “My Room Selection Preview” tool, which offers a dynamic listing of every available room throughout the college house system.

There can be a lot of anxiety over having the right room next semester. “The room-selection process sounds a lot more complicated when you’re talking about it than when you’re actually going through it,” Director of Communications of Business Services Barbara Lea-Kruger said. “Housing has always had enough room for students — you just might not get the exact room type you wanted.”

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