Summer Housing: Applying with a Group

NOTE: If you need housing for both Summer and Autumn Quarters, you must submit two applications in Axess.

Students who want to live with one, two, or three friends may apply for housing in a group. Applying as a group gives friends the best opportunity of being assigned together—especially if everyone in the group has the same gender, student status, residence priority, selects to use group retention, and lists all residence choices in the same order.

Group Applications

  • Students may apply for housing as a group during the first-round Summer Lottery and the second-round Summer Waiting List.
  • Groups cannot be accommodated during the Continuous Assignments rounds, and are rarely assigned together in the Waiting List round.
  • All group members must be seeking housing for the same quarter, in the same assignment round.
  • Group size can consist of two to four students and can be a mix of men and women.
  • Undergraduate groups of three students will automatically receive a priority for assignment to the Governor's Corner 6-person suites.
  • Undergraduate groups of four students will automatically receive a priority for assignment to the Governor's Corner 4-person (and 8-person) suites.
  • There is no guarantee that all members will be assigned to the same residence, or to the same room, suite, or apartment within a residence. During the Waiting List when wholly vacant apartments/rooms/suites are rarely available, groups are more likely to be split between residences.
  • If one student has priority for a given residence and a group member does not, this priority does not transfer to the other group member(s) and could actually cause the group to be split between residences.

Coed Groups

Coed groups who wish to live together within the same apartment/2-room double/4-person suite and are assigned to the same gender-neutral location should submit a Gender Neutral Housing petition on Axess once they are assigned to the same type of housing.  The deadline to submit this petition is June 2, 2015.  Gender-neutral locations for 2015 are Mirrielees 2-bedroom apartments, Governor's Corner 4-person suites, and Governor's Corner 2-room doubles.

Application

  • All group members should submit an individual housing application in Axess with the group information.
  • The group member to submit a housing application first creates the group by entering the group name and password. This person becomes the group leader.
  • The group name should not be easy to duplicate, as no two groups can have the same name. The group name and password should include five to eight characters, at least one alpha and one numeric character, and no symbols—for instance, gr8music and play4us. Letters are case sensitive.
  • Subsequently, each member of the group then files his or her own housing application and selects to join the group by entering the same group name and group password. Please allow time for the group information to post before the next person attempts to join.
  • Each student should decide whether or not to use the group retention feature. This allows students to move to a lower preference in order to keep the group together should there not be space for all group members in a higher preference.
  • All group applicants must list the same residences in the exact same order for the group retention feature to work. Listing different choices may cause the group to become split at the point where the choices diverge.
  • The housing application gives group members the option to copy their group leader’s list of choices. Please note: If the group leader changes his/her choices after a group member has copied the leader’s choices that group member must go back and recopy the group leader’s choices. Otherwise, the old choices will remain on the group member’s application.

Group Retention

The Group Retention feature is only available for groups applying for the first-round Summer Lottery and the second-round Summer Waiting List and groups are required to set a group retention level on their application.

Group retention allows a student to indicate through how many choices they would like the assignments program to keep him/her together with his/her group. For example, if a group of four students were to set their retention rate to four, the computer would try to assign the entire group to their first choice. If there were not four spaces available in that choice, the program would try to assign the entire group to their second choice. If there were not four spaces available in the second choice, the computer would move on through subsequent choices, trying to get the entire group into each choice. If the computer goes through the first four choices and is unable to get the entire group into any of those choices, the computer moves on to the fifth choice but group retention ends. If there is one vacancy in the group’s fifth choice, one person would be assigned to that residence and the computer would move on to the remaining three member’s sixth choice. Group retention allows students to stay together through a select number of residence choices and then branch out on their own.

Group retention also allows larger groups to split off into smaller groups. If a group of four wants to stay together through their 2nd choice and then break into two groups of two through choice six, all group members should set group retention to six. After choice two, the first group of two should list different choices than the second group of two.

In groups where some group members have a housing priority that would allow them to be assigned to a certain residence but other group members do not, using group retention may keep all group members from being assigned to the residence. For example, if one student lives in Mirrielees during the Spring Quarter and his group-mate lives in Roble, the Mirrielees student has a priority for being assigned to Mirrielees for the summer. If they list Mirrielees as their first of six residence choices, set group retention, and are given a random application number that is not low enough to get the Roble resident into Mirrielees for the summer, neither student would be assigned to Mirrielees. If they did not set group retention, on the other hand, the Mirrielees resident might be assigned to Mirrielees and the Roble resident assigned elsewhere.

If a group is split through the first-round Summer Lottery or the second-round Waiting List, they may file a split group petition to be reunited if certain conditions are met.

Changing groups, deciding not to be part of a group, or forming a new group after being assigned

Students can change their applications until the application deadline, and can delete group information, change residence choices, and/or create or join a new group until the deadline.  After you have been assigned to summer housing, if you discover that a friend has also been assigned to the same residence and room/apartment type, you can submit a summer contract change request in Axess to create a new group or join an existing group (maximum group members is four) in order to try to be assigned to the same room/apartment/suite.  The deadline to submit this form is June 2 and all members of new groups will need to submit the online form.

Special Considerations

  • Students and their group members who apply for assignment through the Office of Accessible Education (first-round only) should still file a housing application through Axess. See specific information on the Medical Accommodations page.
  • Enrolled students have a higher priority for housing than do non-enrolled students. This could cause students with high application numbers to be split if the non-enrolled student does not have a good enough application number to be assignable in that particular assignment round.

Specific Room, Suite, and Apartment Assignments

Summer Session (Undergraduate housing except 576 Alvarado) or the Housing Front Desk Supervisors (Single Graduate housing) for that area will try to assign groups within the same apartment/room/suite as long as all group members are assigned to the same type of housing. If that is not possible they will try to assign group members to apartments/rooms nearby within the same neighborhood or building. Coed groups should refer to the coed group information above.

Split Group Petition

Split-group petitions are only accepted after the first-round Summer Lottery and second-round Waiting List. Members of a group that is split after one of these rounds and that wish to be assigned to the same residence as their group mates may petition Housing Assignments by the Split Group Petition deadline – see Calendar and the Split-group Petition. Every attempt is made to reunite split groups by the start of Summer Quarter, but only if:

  • The group was not split because the members selected different group retention choices
  • The group was not split due to members not using the group retention feature
  • All members have the same assignment priority
  • All members listed the same residence choices in the same order
  • All members petitioned by the deadline