The 2025-26 undergraduate housing application is set to begin one month earlier than last year, opening on March 3 and remaining available until April 16, Residential & Dining Enterprises (R&DE) announced Monday. The change marks the fifth consecutive year in which the housing selection process has been altered.
Last year, the housing process was met with controversy after many juniors were left unassigned following R&DE’s decision to create sophomore-priority spaces. Some juniors were placed in quads or triples, leading to dissatisfaction with the process.
“The problem is deciding where you want to live, or if you’re going to rush in the spring,” Rose Garcia ’28 said. The rush process for on-campus Greek organizations occurs in the first week of spring quarter and has previously ended a few days prior to the deadline for pre-assignment applications.
The R&DE announcement did not specify how the pre-assignment process would work for the 2025-26 school year. Typically, pre-assignment allows students to apply to specialty housing options, such as theme houses, co-ops and Greek houses, prior to the general housing application deadline.
“I could see it being a little hard for students who don’t really know who they want to room with, if they’re looking for a roommate,” Edwin Amaya ’25 said.
Students seeking “disability-related housing accommodations” have one month less than previous years to submit their housing application with their group members. A Housing Accommodation Request Form must also be submitted to the Office of Accessible Education (OAE).
“If people who genuinely need OAE have less time to get their preparations in order, it might catch them by surprise and stress them even more, which is contrary to the point of OAE,” Shane Mion ’26 said.
The Daily has reached out to R&DE and the University for comment.
OAE accommodation requests were due on April 15 last year, with assignments announced approximately a month later on May 20. R&DE’s email did not specify when housing assignments would be distributed.
The former neighborhood system, which placed students in one neighborhood, or cluster of dorms, was contested during its four years in existence because it significantly limited students’ housing options. R&DE later rolled back the system following multiple modifications.
“They’ve fixed a lot of the problems and issues that people had in the past,” Amaya said.