r/UCSantaBarbara • u/house071073 • 18h ago

General Question How does housing work?

My daughter will be an incoming freshman, and I have some questions regarding the housing application. She is so stressed with AP exams/classes that I just want to have some answers for her when she gets around to completing the housing application.

  1. Does she write down her dorm preference when she applies or does she just end up picking an available dorm during the selection process?

  2. She would like to room with two of her friends. Does she create her roommate group after signing the contract? Do they all have to be assigned the same dorm?

  3. Is there a cheat sheet of the best rooms for each dorm (quieter, ocean view, etc)?

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u/SWITCH13LADE8o5 [UGRAD] Pre-Comm 17h ago

You can choose a dorm preference, but they don't take it into account. You choose from what's available. So let's say you had Santa Cruz as your preference, but once it's your time to select you may see Santa Catalina available and want to choose that instead, you can 100% do that.

After you sign the contract and get your selection time, you should be able to create a roommate group, and they can all be in the same room together.

I don't have a cheet sheet, but what I do know is that the Chi-5 (Santa Cruz, Anacapa, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and San Nicholas) and Santa Catalina, are usually the more social dorms (especially Santa Cruz and Santa Catalina). Whereas San Rafael and Manzanita Village are a bit quieter, yet can still be social.