Count yourselves lucky, Class of 2029. Your rooms are already set aside for you. Meanwhile, rising sophomores and some rising juniors and seniors will vie for residential college rooms starting on Wednesday, April 2.
In the upcoming days, students will draw into the various four-year residential college options in a wide range of buildings built from 1877 to 2022.
There are 1,001 rooms available during this year’s residential college draw. Some will end up in a one-room triple or a 99-square-foot trapezoidal single, and one lucky group will find themselves in a 1,115 sq. ft. quad in Whitman, half the size of the median newly-constructed single-family home in the United States.
Butler College’s room draw will start off the set. Each following day, students intending to draw into Forbes, Mathey, New College West, Rockefeller, Whitman, and Yeh will draw in that order. The final day of residential college draw is April 10.
Every year, first-year rooms are withheld from the room draw process so that incoming first years can be assigned to advising groups centered around their Residential College Advisor. Rising sophomores who requested housing accommodations have already been assigned their rooms.
The number of available rooms in each college varies year-by-year depending on the number of rooms reserved for incoming freshmen or students requesting accommodations. The number of available rooms on the upperclass draw list has increased by 11.4 percent — 96 rooms — since last year, even though there are 2,234 students on the list, 40 fewer than last year.
Whitman is offering the most singles this year, with 129 available to the 478 students currently on the Whitman draw list. Rockefeller College, in contrast, has the fewest number of singles up for draw, with 58 rooms available to the 393 students on the draw list.
Students drawing in Butler College have the best chances of getting a “quingle” — a spacious quad with a common room and independent bedrooms for each resident. Butler, with 11 available quingles, is followed by the three newest residential colleges, New College West, Yeh, and Whitman, which each have eight.
For students seeking doubles, Forbes is most plentiful, with 68 two-person rooms available — three times as many as next-in-line Mathey’s 23. However, over 80 percent of two-person rooms offered in Forbes are single-room doubles.
Antoun Salib ’26 is the student in a solo draw group with the first overall pick in the Mathey draw.
“I drew alone, and that’s because I want a single,” Salib told the ‘Prince.’ “I’m really just looking for size and location, so I’m probably just gonna choose the biggest single in Little [Hall],” Salib continued. While Joline Hall and Campbell Hall singles have, on average, 20 additional square feet, Little Hall is more centrally located.
Murley-Pivirotto Tower in Whitman College and 99 Alexander Street, part of Forbes College, have the highest average square footage per resident, with around 197 square feet and 207 square feet respectively.
However, there are discrepancies in the data: According to the University’s officially published available rooms list, Room 205, a two-bedroom double with an en suite bathroom at 99 Alexander Street — colloquially known as the “Pink House” — offers residents 340 square feet each and close proximity to the building’s private kitchen and lounge. Meanwhile, the floor plans of the Pink House show that Room 205 is much smaller than claimed by the university, offering each resident closer to 200 square feet.
The two halls with the lowest average square footage per person are Lauritzen Hall in Whitman and Forbes Main Inn with 134 sq. ft. and 137 sq. ft., most likely due to the high amount of low-square-footage singles in Whitman and the high amount of small single-room doubles in Forbes.
With the exception of quads, Rockefeller College has the highest average square footage among all room types when compared to other residential colleges. On average, Rocky doubles are larger than Forbes triples. However, Forbes has the largest singles.
By the end of the residential college draw, four students will have the opportunity to live in the largest sophomore quad on campus, 1981 F201 in Whitman College, which has 1115 square feet. As one former inhabitant commented on TigerDraw:
“Amazing room! The four singles are all larger than any one person reasonably needs, and the common room is still not crowded with a couch, two armchairs, a futon, a fridge, and a TV on a cabinet.”
Four other students will have the privilege of living in the fifth smallest quad across residential college draw, Campbell 32 in Rockefeller College, which has 422 square feet. On TigerDraw, one reviewer wrote:
“Campbell basically has the smallest quads of any res college. Its possible to debunk only if all of the desks and bookshelves are moved out…Campbell also looks like a WW2 bunker. you get used to it.”
Whether you score a palace in Whitman or a broom closet in Mathey, at the end of the day, it’s all just luck of the draw.
Vincent Etherton is a head Data editor for the ‘Prince.’
Alexa Wingate is a head Data editor for the ‘Prince.’
Iman Monfopa Kone contributed reporting.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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