Room Draw

Yesterday was room draw night, the day on which students pick their rooms for next year. Each student gets a random priority number that determines the order in which you get your pick of rooms. Rising seniors get the best numbers, then rising juniors get the middle numbers, and rising sophomores the lowest. Room draw used to be much more hectic and stressful in years past because of the slight housing shortage Dartmouth had. This year, however, with two new dormitory clusters being built, everyone - including the previously shortchanged sophomores, - had guaranteed housing on campus. Even though this was good news, it was hard to predict what would be available for my priority number range. My number wasn’t bad – it was about 150th in the ’09 class, but obviously worse compared to the senior and junior numbers. My future roommate and I had a number of planned strategies, but there was still a good amount of stress and anticipation.

Most of my friends had applied to special cluster programs like East Wheelock or Brewster International House. For special clusters or affinity housing, you needed to submit an application early on, and you get notified of your acceptance before the general Room Draw day. If you choose to live in the special cluster, you do not go through room draw.

I chose someone with whom to room that I wasn’t that friendly with on purpose - she's a friend of a friend. It’s all a matter of preference, but I like to keep my room quiet to relax, and I thought this would be easier with somebody with whom I’m not close friends.

This was the first time I went through Room Draw, and I think my roommate and I were a little more nervous that we should have been! We knew we were going to get rooms, but we had a list of rooms that we really liked, and every time someone took one, it was a painful blow. In the big room set up for Room Draw, there are lists of vacant rooms on the projector screen. As rooms are taken, they are crossed out from the list. We had originally aimed for a two room double (two rooms for two people), but more seniors showed up for room draw than we had expected, so we decided to go for a two room triple (two rooms for three people). This meant that we needed to get a third roommate.

My roommate spotted a friend of hers who wasn’t matched up with anybody, so we recruited her about a minute before my number was called. The entire experience was a huge adrenaline rush, and even though I was really jittery during the process, it was kind of funny in retrospect because everything worked out beautifully. My roommates and I even went to visit our room for next year, and we really liked it. I had some concerns about having to share rooms (I have a three room double right now), but I’m actually excited for next year now.