Bridgewater, Va. – Students began selecting their on-campus housing on March 29 at 10 a.m. and the initial selection process closed on March 31 at around 2:30 p.m. for the 2022-2023 school year. 

Even as the process opened, the rumors spread that some first-years had earlier time slots than juniors.

“When we assign time slots, we pull all the information from the registrar’s office so even as we are making time slots, we don’t know who is a first-year, who’s a junior, or who’s a senior,” said Director of Residential Life and Community Standards Alex Johnson.

Once Residence Life gets the list of everyone’s housing points, which are based on GPA and the amount of credits a person has earned, everyone is put in a generator to determine their time slot.

“We take the chunk of people who have 25 points, and they will be put through a randomized generator, because at that point everyone is considered the same because they have the same amount of points,” said Johnson. “This is to determine their time slot within that housing point group, and we do that for each individual housing point grouping.”

Time slots were in seven minute intervals and five students were let into the portal during every time slot. Due to the apartment style housing being favorable over the residence halls, they were filled early on in the housing selection process.

“When I looked at all the data for the apartment styles, so Strickler, Stone Village and Wampler Towers, they were all selected by the initial pull-in person who had 23 points or higher on average and all of them were gone by 1:30 p.m. on the first day,” said Johnson.

Time slots are the earliest that students can log into the housing portal, but they have access to the housing portal after their time slot as well.

“Even though we do not have to go right at our time slot, if you miss your time slot by even a minute there is a chance that you could miss out on the housing that you want because they fill up so quickly,” said junior Katie Brooks. 

The reason Residence Life uses housing points is because housing selection is considered to be personal. 

“I think the housing process is fine, I did not have the earliest time slot, but I had a decent one and was able to get a good housing placement for next year and that’s all that matters,” said junior Hannah Copp.

Like registration for classes, time slots fall during the daytime hours.

“I think it is kind of ridiculous that most of the time slots occur while people would typically be in class, because it seems like it is predestined for some people to miss their time slots or have to stress out about whether or not they will get the housing they want,” said Brooks.