Robbie Short, Senior Photographer

In an effort to provide on-campus housing to as many students as possible, the Yale College Dean’s Office recently announced a set of changes to the housing draw process. 

Yale’s housing draw, which used to take place on a different timeline for each of the 14 residential colleges, will now be overseen by the Yale College Housing Office on a single calendar. The new streamlined housing process will take place entirely online, as opposed to the in-person lottery systems or hybrid systems that individual colleges have used in the past. Students will now be able to assess which rooms are available, view their layouts and select rooms all through the Yale Housing website. 

“The move to a single, unified calendar will make it easier for you to get information and stay on track, regardless of your college affiliation,” Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd wrote to students in a Feb. 3 mass email.

The updated system is designed to alleviate many issues that arise with annexation housing. In the past, when demand to live in-college has been too high, some students who elected to live on-campus in their residential college have then been moved to another college or overflow housing halls, such as McClellan Hall on Old Campus. 

Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis told the News that in the past, the annexation of certain students to other dorms has been a source of chaos. Members of each residential college’s administration  — for example, the dean, administrative assistant or office manager — have had to be in constant communication with one another to arrange potential annexations. 

“It’ll be a little more efficient to be able to identify where remaining units are,” Lewis said. “There will [now] be one place where it’s all located. We’re still trying to match people to their traditional annex location, but we hopefully can fill up any vacancies.” 

Beyond annexation and organizational streamlining, the new housing system also involves a unilateral housing draw timeline that will apply to all students choosing to live on campus for the 2023-24 school year. 

From now until Feb. 27, all undergraduate students must submit their intent to live either on-campus or off-campus. As in previous years, all sophomores are required to live on-campus unless they are married or over 21 years of age. Juniors and seniors are not required to live on-campus. They are also not guaranteed on-campus housing. 

Following a declaration of intent to live on campus, students within each residential college must then form “rooming groups” with those they intend to live with. For rising sophomores and seniors, this process takes place from March 8 to March 28. Rising juniors and post-seniors, colloquially known as “super seniors,” have from March 8 to April 13 to form their groups. 

In regard to rooming groups, Addie Lowenstein ’26 told the News that she wished there was more clear communication regarding expectations. 

“I’m pretty uninformed about the rooming situation for next year,” Lowenstein said. “I don’t know how many people I’m supposed to find to be living with, and I haven’t gotten any information about this. There’s lots of speculation: ‘oh all sophomore suites need six people, or oh some sophomore suites need eight,’ but I really don’t know. I would definitely feel better if there was more clear information being given out about rooming groups.” 

Following the submission of rooming groups, students will either be told that their cohort size has been approved, or be sent back a new number to either add or subtract suitemates. The approval of rooming groups, according to both Lewis and early communications sent to students, is done by lottery. 

Following lottery results, students will be able to select suites of their designated size within their residential college. The room selection process will take place from April 10 to 12 for sophomores and seniors, and April 20 and 21 for juniors and post-seniors. 

All of these room selections will be centrally managed “in this database by the new housing office rather than the [residential college] teams having to do fourteen different versions,” Lewis told the News. 

The Yale College Dean’s Office is located at 1 Prospect St.