All first-year students applying to residence prior to June 3 are guaranteed a spot in one of seven buildings operated by Waterloo Residences. The 4,585 accommodations available to first-year students are a mixture of traditional rooms (essentially just a bedroom; private or shared with a roommate) and suite-style (like an apartment; shared with roommates).
How do 5,617 students fit into 4,585 beds?
Not all of those students are placed in Waterloo Residences. Some students choose to live in one of the University Colleges (St. Jerome’s, St. Paul’s or Renison; Conrad Grebel has its own application process) while others decide not to live in Residence after applying. Beyond that, any overcommit-students can be accommodated by converting lounge space within residence buildings into bedrooms.
The allocation process
The allocation process takes a myriad of student characteristics into account.
|
Characteristic |
Examples |
Outcome |
|---|---|---|
|
Accessibility |
Mobility, respiration |
Wheelchair-accessible rooms, carpet-free rooms |
|
Age |
Students aged 16 and under or 21 and older |
Young students are placed near Don rooms; mature students are placed together |
|
Gender |
Male, female, other |
First-year students are assigned rooms with students of the same gender identity |
|
Height |
Tall students |
A limited number of beds are available to accommodate students 6’4” and taller |
|
Living Learning program |
Health Studies, Science, Global Business & Digital Arts |
Small groups of students living in the same area are mentored by an upper-year student |
|
Room type preference |
Single, double, interconnected, suite/apartment-style |
3 residences are traditional-style and the other 4 are suite/apartment-style |
|
Roommate requests |
Students must mutually request each other as roommates |
Students may or may not be placed with their requested roommate |
|
Personal characteristics |
Music tastes, noise tolerance, sleep schedules |
Students are matched with roommates having similar preferences, as much as possible |
|
Academic stream |
1A and 1B terms in the Fall/Winter or Fall/Spring |
UWP is the only residence open for the Spring term |
Assigning students to rooms is done both manually (for small groups of students such as those requiring accessible accommodations and young students) and also by a black-box program written by a third-party vendor for the remaining bulk of the students. The black-box is non-deterministic so each run can place students in different accommodations. Reports are run every day to examine how successful the allocation is so far; that is, how close the results are to the students’ preferences.
Once students are assigned to rooms, the accommodation and meal plan fees are assessed and sent to Quest. The student pays for these items through Student Accounts.
How does IST fit into this process?
IST's Departmental & Campus Applications (DCA) group has a group of developers who support and enhance the applications used by Waterloo Residences to manage their students. The team remains on high alert for six weeks prior to, during, and after allocation to diagnose and fix any issues that arise during this critical period.
How successful is the allocation?
It works quite well. Out of the 4,585 students that are assigned to rooms, about 290 (6%) of them ask for a room change.
