The 2024-25 housing selection process began on Jan. 28 with the residential college six and five-person suite applications. The ongoing process includes the opening of Residential College C along with the continued use of a “seniority-driven, random selection” assignment lottery, according to the 2024-25 Housing Guide.

Residential college dorms, which are currently dominated by seniors and juniors, are expected to increase in availability with the opening of Residential College C. In an email to Residential Experience student employees, Housing and Residential Experience also announced changes to residential experience staff policies that will no longer reserve single rooms with private bathrooms or residential college suites for RAs beginning in fall 2024 and fall 2025, respectively.  

Opening Residential College C

The opening of Residential College C will expand the housing inventory by 305 beds. This building will include 159 single rooms, 39 double rooms and 17 four-person suites. As a result, the total number of single rooms will go up from 729 to 888, double rooms from 199 to 238 and four-person suites from 88 to 105. 

RCC will also house the majority of new RA positions, with 10 being added to RCC, four to Branscomb Quad and one to Chaffin Place.

Associate Director of Housing Assignments Ashley Ladyman said the new residential building will provide more opportunities for students to live in residential colleges.

“We use a seniority-based housing assignments model to help ensure more students have the opportunity to live in residential colleges before graduation,” Ladyman said in an email to The Hustler. “The upcoming Fall 2024 opening of RCC, adding 305 beds, will allow even more students to be assigned to a residential college in the upcoming housing selection process.”

The university’s housing point system, which assigns two points to rising sophomores, three to juniors and four to seniors, will continue to play a crucial role in the housing allocation process. This system aims to prioritize seniority, ensuring that upper-year students have better chances of securing preferred housing. Rising sophomores are unlikely to get a single, according to the 2024-25 Housing Guide.

“Due to limited single room availability, we encourage all students, in particular rising 2nd-year students, to identify one or more roommates,” the guide reads.

Analyzing last year’s trends

The demand for residential college placement was extremely high in the 2023-24 housing process, according to HRE. Seniors comprised a majority of residential college rooms in the fall 2023 semester, though 38% of spaces were occupied by juniors. Sophomores occupied only 0.4% of these spaces.

Of those who applied for six-person suites, groups with a housing point average of 3.83 — mostly rising seniors — and higher were successful. The 78 groups with a point average of 3.67 and lower were all unsuccessful. 

For four-person suite applicants, only some groups (88%) entirely composed of rising seniors were successful, while 245 groups with a point average at or below four were unsuccessful. All students with a point average over three who applied for residential college singles and doubles were successful. Rising juniors, who have a point average of exactly three, were mostly successful in obtaining residential college doubles.

No sophomores were granted traditional single rooms except for those with pre-approved accommodations or RA status. Only 8% of rising sophomores were placed into three-person traditional apartments. 

Sophomore and Chaffin resident Layne Foeder said her expectations for getting a four-person apartment in Village at Vanderbilt or Highland Quad were low after being rejected from a residential college suite with a group of rising sophomores.

“When we got selected, we were so happy, and personally I was shocked because I was not getting my hopes up about being selected. Our first choice was in Village but in retrospect, I’m glad they were all filled up by the time it was our turn to register because I would not have wanted to make that trek every day,” Foeder said. “Highland is much more manageable, and I enjoy the 10-15 minute walk to and from main campus.”

According to the 2024-25 Housing Guide, HRE expects to permit about 605 students to live off campus. The fall 2023 semester saw a larger-than-anticipated incoming transfer student cohort which led to a higher number of rising juniors being granted off-campus housing from the waitlist, according to HRE.