It’s time to apply for on-campus housing. Here’s what’s changed.

Penn's on-campus room selection process has undergone significant changes this semester to streamline the application, College Houses & Academic Services announced.

The room selection application has notably been combined into one application for all students — instead of three applications in prior years — in order to allow students to access the entire inventory of housing options at once. The new single application will be used for students applying to residential programs, returning to their current college houses, or moving to another college house.

Rising juniors and seniors will also be permitted to keep their current rooms as long as they can fill all of the beds in the room — either from current roommates or other current residents within the same College House, according to the Penn Residential Services website.

Last year, in order for students to select a room in their current college house, 50 percent of the group was required to be current residents of that college house. This year, however, only the designated "captain" of the group is required to be a current resident. Single rooms, residential community beds, freshmen beds, and ADA beds are excluded from this new policy. 

Ryan Keytack, director of Four-Year Houses and Residential Programs, said the new system will first ask if a student wants to live in a residential program, which have been renamed "Program Communities" this year. If the student opts out, the system will ask if the student wants to retain their room or stay in their current house. If neither of those options are desired, then a student will receive a time slot to apply to move to another college house.

“There are a few other questions about lifestyle preference and roommate groups,” Keytack said. “All of the additional and supplemental steps — such as four-year houses being part of the program community process, priority point applications in houses — that used to cause confusion to some students have been eliminated,” Keytack said.

Last year, students applying to residential programs could not apply as a single group. With this change in policy, however, students will now apply in groups, if applicable, regardless of whether  or not they choose to live in a residential program with other students.

Group captains also do not have to assign everyone in the group during their designated time slot to select their housing preferences.

This year, students who cannot choose their preferred room type can also add themselves to the waitlist during the Live Selection period.