Each year, first-years, sophomores, and juniors can find their housing arrangements for the upcoming academic year through the room draw process. While some students received rooms in February through the medical accommodations process, most students will draw for rooms from mid-March to early April in groups ranging in size from one to eight individuals. Using a random algorithm that gives preference to higher class years, the University assigned a draw time to each group.
This year, 1,852 rooms ranging from single-person bedrooms to six-person suites are available during room draw, a decrease from the 1,890 rooms available in 2023. These rooms are divided into ten separate draws: seven residential college draws, a draw for general upperclass housing, a draw for independent students, and a draw for Spelman Hall. The upperclass draw has 63 fewer available rooms compared to 2023, the greatest drop among all the draws. In contrast, the Whitman draw increased by 31 rooms, while New College West’s draw shrunk by 27 rooms.
“All first-year rooms are withheld from Room Draw so that the incoming class can be assigned to ’Zee group zones that are geographically centered around their RCA,” University Spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote in email to The Daily Princetonian.
“There are also several pre-draw assignments that occur for student staff positions, students with approved housing accommodations, and certain living-learning communities (such as the Edwards Collective and the 2D Co-op). Generally, the size of the incoming and outgoing classes and facilities projects do not play a role in what rooms are available for Room Draw.”
Consistent with last year, the largest draw is the upperclass draw, while the smallest draw is Spelman, which has only 52 quads. With 116 rooms available this year, the Rockefeller draw is the smallest of the residential college draws. While the largest draw last year was New College West, with 174 available rooms, Whitman’s 185 available rooms make it the largest draw this year.
Nearly three quarters of the available rooms in the Whitman and Butler draws are singles, the greatest proportion among the residential colleges. Older residential colleges tend to have fewer singles, with only half of the rooms available in Rockefeller and Mathey Colleges being singles. Forbes College is unique for having very few triples and no quads, with all but eight triples in the Forbes draw being singles and doubles.
There are just four quints — five-person rooms — on campus. Two of the four available quints are in Hamilton and Little as part of Mathey College and the other two quints are in upperclass halls Cuyler and Laughlin. The largest quint, Hamilton 324, has 957 square feet of space, making it the seventh largest room on campus. Six six-person suites are all in the upperclass draw. One of these six-person suites, Patton T12, has two floors and 1278 square feet, the largest available on campus.
The smallest available room, Pyne 230, has only 82 square feet and is also part of the upperclass draw. The ten largest available rooms have not changed from last year. However, Forbes Annex 422, which has 90 square feet and was the fifth smallest available room last year, is not on this year's list.
Unlike last year, there are no rooms available for draw in Walker Hall this year. After the University converted Walker Hall to graduate housing, undergraduates who drew into Walker received an email over the summer notifying them they would be reassigned to other housing.
In all of the residential college draws, most groups are made up of a single person. Draw groups consist of one, two, or four students at the highest frequencies, which is consistent with the top three available room types for every draw. In the upperclass draw, almost a quarter of all students are in four-person groups, a greater proportion than all the residential college draws. The Rockefeller draw only includes one available triple but has eight three-person draw groups.
In all except the Yeh, Whitman, and upperclass draws, the number of single-person draw groups exceeds the number of available singles. Last year, the number of available singles ran out before the draw times of over half the rising sophomore class. On March 20, Associate Director of Student Housing Angie Rooney sent an email with room draw tips to those drawing into Yeh College the following day, warning of the lack of singles.
“There may not be very many singles for sophomores at all,” Rooney wrote. “If you are in a draw group alone, your first best option is to find someone on the draw list that you could live with in a suite (double, triple or quad). You can use the drop down option to select to drop down into a group and then draw into a larger room with that group.”
After Yeh draw was completed, only six quads remained, all in the two furthest south buildings. After the Butler draw, which ended on March 20, only four quads remained.
“Initially I was thinking about either getting a single/quingle (four singles within a quad) in Bloomberg, but then I settled on trying to get a single in any Butler building,” Aidan Wang ‘27 wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “It was a bit stressful due to the uncertainty of being put on a waitlist as there were no singles left long before my draw time.”
Wang‘s draw time was at the end of page eight of ten for the Butler draw.
Students can search for buildings to draw into and compare options on the Housing and Real Estate Services website. The TigerApps website TigerDraw contains data on many dorm rooms, including occupancy, square footage, and room reviews for some rooms — though the website notes that the data comes from the 2017 and 2019 draws and may be out of date.
The room draw process this year began on Monday, March 18, and will conclude on Wednesday, April 10. Students who were unsuccessful in selecting a room during the draw process and wish to receive University housing next year must apply for the wait list by April 29. Housing is guaranteed for students all four years.
Alexa Wingate is an assistant Data editor for the ‘Prince.’
Kate Alvarez is a contributing Data writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please direct any corrections requests to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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