Students certainly benefit from the university's guaranteed-housing policy, and Residence Life and Housing runs an efficient selection process. Nevertheless, changes to several policies currently in place would not only help students relax about their choices, but would improve the system the as well.

All housing choices are currently binding.

Once a student makes his or her selection, he or she will be charged the full balance of the semester's rent.

With this policy, students are forced to make important, binding decisions with often less than an hour's notice. For example, students who don't get student apartments have to choose within the hour whether or not they want to live in a Quad single or opt for a double later on or look for off-campus housing options.

If there were a later drop period in which students could apply to be released from their housing agreement without penalty, this would greatly reduce student's anxiety about their choices.

Furthermore, if RLH were to utilize the university's technological resources with greater efficiency, students could check online throughout the process for real-time updates on availability. In fact, we recommend that RLH and Information Systems look into modeling housing selection after class registration on WIN.

Based upon previous years' selection results and one's current number, RLH could also provide students with a more realistic idea of their chances to get their first or second choice. It would also be helpful to publish the previous year's cut-off numbers for each housing option.

While these odds may be rough estimations at best, giving students an idea about their standing would calm some students' nerves around campus and make the process run smoother.

Keeping records of how many students try to live in each residence hall and how many get in, if such does not already exist, would also give RLH a good idea of student demand for future rooms and buildings.

Moreover, RLH says it receives high scores from its annual survey. However, the survey does not ask compelling questions about the overall value of the process. Perhaps a more in-depth survey would provide truer, more useful results.