Housing Guru Shares Secrets

If you've got a housing question, Steve Estes has the answer.

A SEAS first-year, Estes is already a housing wizard. He was invited to be a member of the URH workforce this year because of his ability to compute statistics, predict dorm availability, and convince students to take housing that will suit their needs.

Since then, Estes has been helping his fellow students find the best possible housing they can get out of their lottery numbers. He says that a lot of the work that he's been doing for URH isn't necessarily number-crunching; he uses his insider's knowledge of the housing lottery and selection process to transmit information to students who have questions about what is in their best interest.

"I had been helping people on the URH message board, and when I showed Rob [Lutomski, assistant director of URH] some of my calculations, he offered me a job," said Estes, who is planning to study computer science. "At URH, I found that I could use my knowledge of computers to help people."

Estes feels that the major achievement of his technical URH work has been the "unofficial Furnald list," a document he posted on the on-line message board after group suite selection finished. He spent a whole afternoon putting together data, ordering a list of the rising sophomores who would have the chance to pick into Furnald.

"Based on my webserver stats, my list was checked 176 different times, so somebody was interested," he said.

Michael Deutsch, SEAS '06, recalled that Estes was very helpful during the housing selection process. "He was able to find out how many people were ahead of me and my roommate in the lottery, he was able to tell us where we would find the best chances at good housing."

Deutsch and his current roommate, lottery number 186, had originally decided that they were going to try to pick a McBain double with the most available floor space. Estes convinced the two to take a Watt studio double: although the dorm has smaller rooms, it offers a private kitchen and bathroom--a selling point for Deutsch.

Estes has a great deal of prior experience with technical computer support. He worked full-time at a division of Sallie Mae, a student loans corporation, in Boston for one and a half years before he came to Columbia, providing technical support to financial aid administrators of universities.

Currently, he is involved in a number of projects where he provides free technical support for video game software via on-line message boards.

Estes might work with another URH employee over the summer, helping to set up an on-line system for the room condition reports that resident advisors must fill out at the end of each year. The reports inform the URH staff of maintenance jobs, which are completed over the summer. He says that the current system does not work very well because some RAs do not fill out the reports, causing a lot of headaches in the fall when students discover unresolved maintenance problems.

In the past few days, the possibility of a room shortage has become a particular concern. "Rob counted up the number of rooms left and the number of people that are left to choose in general selection. It turns out that we have a shortage of 50 to 100 beds," Estes said.

However, the shortage shouldn't be too much of a problem, he said, because between 100 and 200 students cancel their housing over the summer due to study abroad or off-campus living.

"It never hurts to file for a summer transfer, because even if you don't get it, you're no worse off," Estes said. He added that sophomores who file for doubles through summer transfer are likely to get what they ask for, since Lutomski has always been able to accommodate that type of request.

Estes feels that "smart sophomores who weren't too picky" ended up the luckiest in this year's housing selection process. A rising sophomore who wasn't resigned to living alone or in a suite, entered group selection with a friend, and chose a walk-through double probably got the best value for their lottery luck.

"People don't realize that having a walk-through double is almost as good as having a single. The person on the inside room has almost complete privacy, and sophomores who recognized that were willing to choose a Wien walk-through over a McBain double," Estes said.

Many East Campus exclusion groups were refused from their housing preference this year. Estes attributes that to the unusually large number of EC exclusion groups that entered general selection. Posters and flyers flooded residence halls before registration began last month, but many of the groups of three rising juniors and two rising sophomores that formed as a result did not get the housing they had hoped for.

Senior regrouping, implemented this year, turned out to a be completely chaotic, Estes said. "It was like the New York Stock Exchange. There were messages written on chalkboards that said, 'Need one senior for suite. Will pay. Yell for John.'"

One thing that Estes can clarify is the concern that some students have been receiving special treatment from URH because their parents have called to demand a better housing option.

"People don't understand the degree to which Rob enforces the rules," Estes said. "I can pretty much guarantee that Rob doesn't allow for any special exceptions."