Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) Director Yolanda King was unable to provide the exact number of students who qualified for selection times, but said that the number was smaller than usual.
King said there was no way to predict that a greater number of rising seniors would seek on-campus housing for next year, limiting choices for rising juniors.
"We anticipate there is always going to be a waitlist during room selection, as we do not have guaranteed housing for all four years," King told the Daily in an email. "There is variability from year to year that we cannot always predict. When we did learn how many rising seniors and juniors submitted online applications, we did contact the students right away with the update regarding available rooms and limited appointment times."
King emailed class of 2014 and class of 2015 students on Thursday, informing them of the limited number of appointment times.
Fewer rising sophomores signed up for group apartments this year, increasing the availability of these rooms in the general housing lottery, according to King.
"In the past the numbers have been spread out between rising sophomores, juniors and seniors signing up for group apartments," she said. "This has resulted in us having to reserve more beds for sophomores in some of the suites that would typically have been available to juniors and seniors."
King encouraged students to sign up for the wait-list in case any students cancel their housing plans to study abroad or, if there is any flexibility with the rooms reserved for the Class of 2016.
"The wait list is maintained in order of student lottery numbers from highest to lowest," she said. "Students will be notified as soon as spaces become available. In the past, students on the wait list have received offers to live on campus."
In the meantime, King said, students should apply for off-campus housing by using resources such as JumpOffCampus, a website that helps students find off-campus housing, or visiting the ResLife office in South Hall to review housing listings that local landlords submit.
"Some of the students on the wait list have declined [in the past] because it was not the space they wanted, and thus [they] selected to live off campus," she said.
Though sophomore Robert Joseph will be studying abroad next fall and is unaffected by the housing shortage, he worries the off-campus options are too limited at this point in the year for his classmates who are trying to find housing.
"I'm not entirely satisfied with that yet, because it doesn't look as though there are that many housing options off campus, and the ones that are available are expensive and possibly far away from school," Joseph said.
Joseph said he wishes students could have [had?] found out earlier that housing would be more limited for rising juniors than in years past.
"If we found out in October or November that there wasn't going to be as much housing ... there would be time to sign a contract, but finding out in March, we have students without a lot of options," Joseph said.
Sophomore Graham Starr did not receive a selection time despite his relatively high lottery number of almost 5600. He originally tried to secure housing in Hillsides Apartments with a group of friends, but came in right below the cutoff because more seniors than usual applied for Hillsides suites.
Starr explained that he assumed he could secure a single [in Hillsides], because his friend group included current juniors who had comparatively lower numbers as rising juniors and were able to find singles on campus last year.
According to Starr, almost all of the off-campus prospects have been taken.
"Because ResLife waited this long [to inform students there would be less housing available for rising juniors], there isn't a possibility of finding a place close to campus or within my price range," he said.
Starr contested that JumpOffCampus is not student-friendly.
"It's easier to find a landlord in a random place than to look through [JumpOffCampus]," Starr said. "It's not even mostly correct in a lot of what it does."
The main problem, according to Starr, is that ResLife has been irresponsible in informing rising juniors of their actual, limited chances of receiving a room on campus.
Housing is implicitly guaranteed for seniors because of their high lottery numbers, and the fact that freshmen and sophomores are guaranteed housing makes it difficult for juniors to find housing, Starr said.
"Juniors are out to fend for themselves," he said.
Melissa Wang and Justin Rheingold contributed reporting to this article.
