For the Class of 2027, Scully wins by a mile: A look at rising senior room draw

With the first week of room draw behind us, students have gotten a taste of both the new room draw system and the new rules that come with it. Some of these changes include the new Available Rooms Module rather than hourly PDF lists of available rooms, a new Room Viewer site for 360 degree viewing of certain rooms, and a new Housing and Real Estate Services landing site. At the start of draw on April 7, there were 855 upperclassmen rooms available. By the evening of April 10, that number had shrunk to under 400. 

To better understand the drawing preferences of the Class of 2027, The Daily Princetonian analyzed hourly records of the available rooms, tracking dorm size, space, and location. Under the new system, groups draw every four minutes, rather than every two minutes as in previous years. Approximately 15 groups drew every hour. In total, 458 rooms and 636 upperclassmen beds were chosen by rising seniors, with an average of 1.4 individuals per room. 

Before draw began, all available rooms were listed on the Available Rooms Module through the Housing and& Real Estate Services portal. Within upperclass dormitories, Scully Hall started with the largest number of singles at 118, while Little Hall had the highest number of quads at 23. Only two halls, Patton and Feinberg, had six-person rooms. Similarly, only Cuyler and Laughlin Hall had five-person rooms. Triples were more common, appearing in every hall except Scully and Feinberg.

When comparing rooms by capacity, singles were by far the most popular. The graph below shows the total number of rooms of each size available at various points during rising senior draw. Singles, which started with over 470 available rooms, fell to just 131 by 4 p.m. on April 10. The smallest change came from quints. Only two five-person rooms were available at the start of draw, and one was selected between 11 a.m. and noon on April 7. Apart from singles, doubles also saw a noticeable decrease, falling from 156 to 78 available rooms over the course of the first three days of draw.

Next, the ‘Prince’ looked at the locations that the Class of 2027 favored most. Scully was the most popular upperclassmen dorm, falling from 159 available rooms to only 23 by the end of April 10. After Scully, Pyne Hall had both the second highest number of available rooms at the start of draw at 159 and the second highest number of rooms drawn at 66. Meanwhile, Feinberg had none of its nine rooms drawn by the Class of 2027, and Little had only six of its 32 available rooms drawn on April 10.

By location, current juniors did not seem to have an overly strong preference for a specific part of campus. The graph below shows all upperclass dorms, shaded by percentage of total occupancy that was full by April 10. Scully was the most popular at 86 percent occupancy, while Feinberg was the least popular in the first round of draw. Other popular locations included 1903 Hall, Dod Hall, and Pyne Hall, which were all over 50 percent full by the end of April 10. But dorms like Brown and Henry, both of which are near the popular 1903 and Pyne respectively, were under 25 percent occupied. 

The last metric the ‘Prince’ analyzed came in the form of square footage. Here, most kinds of rooms saw little to no real change in their average size. Excluding six-person dorms on account of their small numbers, singles and quads saw the largest drop with a loss of 21.21 and 29.73 square feet respectively. Overall, the size of each dorm type stayed relatively constant.

At the time of publication, rising juniors have already begun their draw. This year, the Classes of 2027 and 2028 both had draw times on the morning of Monday, April 13, though rising seniors will finish their draws before rising juniors begin their draw. Data from 9–10:06 a.m. on April 13 for senior draw was not available for this article. Members of the Class of 2028 who are unable to draw into their residential college will have to contend for what remains after the picks from the Class of 2027.

Veda Devireddy is an assistant Data editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from Baton Rouge, La. and can be reached at veda[at]princeton.edu.

Vincent Etherton is a senior Data writer and head Data editor emeritus for the ‘Prince.’

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com