In less than a month the College has reduced the number of students on the wait-list for Fall term housing from 96 to 40.
"To be down to 40 at the end of June is encouraging for us," said Bud Beatty, associate dean of residential life. "[I'm] very optimistic about the wait-list."
Meanwhile, many sophomores are waiting anxiously at home to find out if they'll have a place to stay next fall on campus.
"It's kind of a pain," said Julie McGuire '98 in a phone interview from her home Massachusetts. "I'm hoping they're going to get housing for me."
Beatty said his goal is to house all of the remaining students on the wait-list, but he said he "can't make any guarantees because you never know."
"We only house upperclass students if space is available," Beatty said. All of the students still left on the wait-list are members of the class of 1998.
Students on the wait-list receive on-campus housing primarily when other students decide to cancel their housing contracts, Beatty said. Approximately five to 10 students with housing assignments cancel their housing contracts each week, he said.
"[There are] a lot of variables that play into whether students will be here in the fall," he said.
The other ways students can take their names off of the wait-list are either to change their Dartmouth-Plans or find off-campus housing, he said.
Students often decide to change their D-Plans or live off campus, which leads to the cancellation of their housing contracts, he said.
Last year ORL placed 423 students on the wait-list as opposed to 132 this May, Beatty said.
He attributed the lower number of student on the wait-list to the new housing assignment process, which assigns only one housing priority number to each student, with seniors getting the best number and sophomores getting the worst.
Under the old system, ORL would still be assigning rooms to upperclass students during the summer. The new housing process allows ORL to inform students of their exact room assignments in May and provides it with more time to house wait-listed students.
But he said other factors contributed to the smaller wait-list as well.
The creation of the provisional D-Plan enrollment status in addition to the greater number of students who choose to go on off- campus programs in the Fall have helped reduce wait-listed students, he said. "A lot of different offices have helped manage enrollment."
