lottery-numbers

Columbia Housing, Residential Life, and the Residence Hall Leadership Organization announced the transition of housing selection to a completely online platform on Thursday afternoon. This will occur alongside other changes to the process, including the restructuring of group selection and the extension of the timeline to help lessen the stress of room selection for students.

Each year, more students will be in the housing lottery than spaces available—meaning that as a sophomore, you might not find any available spaces if you have a bad lottery number. Don’t freak out yet! We can assure you that Columbia will not leave you out on the streets next year, which is why the Columbia Sophomore Waitlist and Barnard Guaranteed List were put in place to ensure housing for those unlucky sophomores stuck with no available rooms.

Every March, when the housing lottery comes around, what students find the most daunting is not where they will be living, but rather who will be in their housing group. Finding a group can be one of the most stressful part of the housing process. What happens when you are just one person short of snagging a spot in Plimpton? Or what if your group is larger than the average suite? Here are all of the different housing options for groups of one to eight people at both Barnard and Columbia.

Though it may feel like we’ve just arrived back on campus from winter break, February is already coming to a close, and you know what that means: It’s time to think about where you’re going to live next semester! If you’re bogged down with midterms, or didn’t have the chance to attend ResHall Rush (the room selection information session) last Thursday, don’t fret. Spectrum’s got you covered with the timeline of need-to-know dates to help you find your new home for the coming school year.

It’s no secret that Columbia’s campus culture is isolating. Despite being in one of the most populated cities in the world, many students can attest to feeling alone among the crowd. Columbia obviously endeavors to remedy this—there’s a reason Scott Helfrich is in your DMs three times a day. Yet, despite Columbia’s efforts, solace comes not in the form of Harry Potter read-alouds but in the support systems students form with their friends on campus. As first-years, we all relish the idea of living free from our parents’ reign. For many of us, following the completion of our principal year comes the added possibility of living with the very friends we have grown close to and rely upon. Yet under current Columbia Housing policy, the students who need this support, those with disabilities, are denied the privilege of living with a group of friends and enter into an isolating and frustrating housing process.

Barnard’s Associate Director for Housing Operations Matt Kingston clarified the college’s new housing lottery system at Student Government Association’s weekly meeting Monday night.

Hurry home from spring break because lottery numbers are coming out tonight, Columbia!

So you got your lottery number ... now what?

While you were cursing the heavens and damning the housing gods for your crappy lottery number, Yang Qu, CC '17, was feelin' fine. Why? This.