Housing strategies

• The best strategy is to sign up for Group Suite Selection in a group of friends. Your group will get two shots at room selection. First, you can pick a double or suite in Group Suite Selection. Or, second, you can drop out of Group Suite Selection and pick a single in General Selection.
• The best group size is probably 2.
• It is especially important for rising sophomores to enter in a group, and, at best, a group of 2. Leaving out the chance of getting a good enough lottery number for Furnald, rising sophomores can only get good housing through the many doubles and small number of suites in Group Suite Selection. The only spaces left in General Selection are the doubles left over from Group Suite Selection. These are 'blind'; you will be with a stranger, unless you and a friend choose the same one.
• Rising sophomores can also join a group of rising juniors and seniors looking for a suite. This is often the only way to get a 7-person suite in 47 Claremont or an 8-person suite in Ruggles.
• Rising juniors and seniors often need rising sophomores to fill the double in the EC Exclusion Suites they're trying to get. They are able to recruit rising sophomores yet still have a good chance at getting the suite because they intend to invoke the EC Exclusion Rule. Under this rule, only the top three point values are used in calculating the the group point value.
• A group can raise its point value by taking juniors and seniors who plan to study abroad. This is unethical, but if other people do it, you at least have the right to know that it gets done.
• Apply for Barnard housing. They like to take Columbia students because then more Barnard students can live in Columbia housing (and there are many Barnard students who want to do so).