Students voice mixed reactions to new room draw process after draw times released

Undergraduates received their room draw times for the 2026–27 academic year with the University’s updated housing selection system on Thursday. Students expressed a range of reactions about the new process, from praise for added room-visualization tools to frustration over technical issues and uncertainty about how favorable their assigned times were relative to other students.

This year, the University replaced its previous housing platform with the commonly-used StarRez and reorganized room draw into a three-phase process: application, group formation, and room selection. Among the new features were a 360-degree room viewer, an optional roommate-matching profile tool, and a new system in which students or draw groups could see only their own assigned draw time, rather than a full list of students’ assigned times for their relevant housing pool.

This year, a student’s assigned draw time is a 4-minute period where they have the option to pick their room. Rising sophomores can only draw into a room in their assigned residential college, while rising juniors and seniors are able to draw into upperclassmen housing or their residential college, subject to availability. Several students said the 360-degree room viewer was one of the clearest improvements in the new system.

“I really liked the addition this year of the 360 [degree image] viewer,” Ava Dippel ’27 said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “Previously, we had to rely only on the floor plans, and couldn’t really get a good sense of what the rooms looked beyond room dimensions. This year, I could really get a sense of each room in detail.”

Eliana Linder ’29 similarly said the room viewer tool made the process feel more concrete.

“The 360 viewer was helpful, and it was great to be able to really see the features and sizing of each room before the draw,” she told the ‘Prince.’ “I am a freshman, so I don’t know what the housing process was like before this, but I felt like I was able to clearly see the features of different rooms.”

However, various students described Thursday’s release of draw times as stressful, particularly when the housing site became difficult to access.

“I thought the [housing] website was easy to navigate … but it did crash when draw times came out, which was annoying for students, because we couldn’t see our times for a while,” Linder said. “We were refreshing the site for a long time.”

Razvan Verde ’29 said he had a similar experience. “The website didn’t load when I went to check my draw time … the site had crashed,” he shared.

Verde is a News contributor for The Daily Princetonian.

For some students, the biggest point of confusion was the lack of transparency around where their assigned draw time stood relative to others’ times.

Under the previous system, students could see a complete list of who was assigned what room draw time for their housing category, allowing them to immediately gauge whether their slot was relatively early or late in the order. This year, students were shown only their own time.

“Our group got April 22 for our draw time … I had no idea if the time was good or not, because I couldn’t see what others had for their times,” Linder said. “It should’ve been more clear where you were compared to other people in your grade and in other grades.”

Verde echoed that sense of uncertainty. “Our draw group got April 22 as our draw time, but we didn’t know what that meant,” he told the ‘Prince.’ “At first we thought it was pretty good, but then we learned that April 6 was the very first room draw date of the process, and so then we thought [our time] was horrendously bad.”

The rising senior class have the first draw times; after them, rising junior times begin on April 13. 

Verde added that while he found the general draw system understandable, the context around draw timing in particular felt insufficient. 

“We had no information or confirmation from the University about when everything starts or ends,” he shared. “It’s very confusing and unclear overall.”

Linder also said she was disappointed with her group’s assignment after hearing about others’ times. “I was not happy with my draw time, because it was not early in the day,” she said. “I’m not insanely disappointed, but think it could’ve gone better.”

After getting a better sense of where his time stood in the overall schedule, Verde said his group’s expectations for housing had shifted accordingly. “A quingle would be nice, but we’ll probably be in a quad because of our draw time,” he shared. A “quingle” refers to a four-person suite that includes four single-occupancy bedrooms.

Dippel expressed feeling a similar sense of ambiguity with the room draw assignments, even though she ultimately felt good about her slot.

“Last year, we were sent our room draw time in a list of all the upperclassmen draw times, and so you could immediately tell if it was a good time or not,” Dippel told the ‘Prince.’ “This year, we were just given our own draw time without being able to see others’ times, and so I didn’t know how good it was at first. After asking around though, I am very happy with my draw time this year.”

Students also differed in how they assessed the clarity of the overall process and the University’s communication around it.

Dippel said that although “there were definitely a ton of emails that flooded [her] inbox from the Service Point,” she still felt “the steps of the process made sense.”

Verde similarly wrote that “the three steps [of the housing process] were pretty clear.”

Others, however, were more critical of the clarity of the process. Paras Dodd ’29 said the volume of communication from University Housing Services made it harder, not easier, to keep up with key deadlines.

“I found the process to be quite unclear,” he told the ‘Prince’ in an interview. “[Housing] sent out so many emails that I just stopped opening them, because a lot of them were useless junk. The amount of mail they sent out disincentivized me from checking their emails.”

Dodd added that in the initial room draw application phase two weeks ago, he didn’t receive any reminders from his Residential College Advisor about filling out the room draw form when it was due. “I felt like as freshmen, we should’ve been provided with more reminders from outside the Service Point.”

As a result, Dodd missed the deadline to sign up for room draw. Afterwards, he said he had gone to the Service Point — the support center where University Housing services are located, emailed his dean, and filed two support tickets. “I was told there was absolutely nothing they could do to add me back into room draw, and I would get bottom priority with a random roommate,” he said.

But, according to Dodd, that decision was later reversed. “They then emailed me four days later, adding me back into room draw as an individual applicant,” he wrote. “So I was able to form with my original group in time for the room draw stage. And clearly, it wasn’t true when they told me there was no way I could be added back.”

For Dodd, the experience pointed to more widespread confusion. “I know there are a lot of others who missed room draw,” he stated. He added that he felt as though “there was some sort of issue here with the way in which the steps for housing were communicated to students.”

Even students who completed the process without major disruptions described the new platform as anxiety-inducing at moments, especially given the stakes of housing selection.

“The process was a bit stressful,” Victoria Outkin ’28 said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “I kept thinking I was restarting the application or something to find the one that I submitted. You have the doubts of … did I make sure everything goes through? Did I submit it correctly? Did I [accidentally] start a new application? Because [room draw] is an important thing.”

The room selection phase is scheduled to begin on April 6, and the last day a room can be selected is April 30.

Caitlyn Tablada is the associate News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading internal strategy. She is from New York City, and typically covers student life.

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