Objective

Every summer, incoming freshmen chatter with their parents and peers about how to fill out the "Approaching Stanford" housing form.  They have many questions, such as "what is ethnic housing?" and "what exactly is FroSoCo?"  Of course, the answer is out there on the internet, hidden several clicks underneath the Undergraduate Academic Life homepage, but by no means easy to find.  In fact, the easiest solution at the moment is to just ask a friend who goes to Stanford, but not everybody has the luxury of doing so.

A similar situation exists for continuing students.  Every year as Spring Quarter rolls around, Stanford students start thinking about where to live next year.  In particular, freshman going into their sophomore year are especially concerned about their first experience with Stanford's Draw, an elaborate raffle of sorts designed to fairly assign students to the various dormitories on campus.  It sounds simple enough, but there are so many important details that it often leaves freshmen lost.  A quick look at the Stanford Housing website shows just how complicated this process is--there are so many different numbers, dates, and factors that affect the final assignment.  With so many choices and no single comprehensive source of information, freshman often end up consulting upper classmen for advice.

Not only that, but there is no single good source of information regarding the subjective aspects of the various residence halls.  For many weeks prior to the Draw deadline, students ask each other "How is the dorm culture in Branner?  How good is the food?".  These questions can only be answered by the students themselves.  This site is meant to address this lack of information availability, and to act as a central repository for students' opinions on dormitory life in general.

Is this site for you?
    This Stanford Undergraduate Housing Tutorial website is meant to be a central source of everything regarding housing at Stanford, from the Draw to how to furnish one's room.  It is catered towards incoming freshmen and to-be sophomores looking for information on how to sign up for housing, and what the different housing options are.  However, it will also contain valuable information on many other aspects, such as how to apply to be a Resident Assistant, which applies to upperclassmen as well.  Unlike the Stanford Housing website which acts more as a reference piece and lists all the detailed numbers and dates, this site is meant to be a tutorial of sorts to guide readers in the right direction.  It is also meant to be a much more accessible site that is easy to read.
    If you are unaccustomed with the Stanford undergraduate housing system, you should probably start out looking at the assignment process, even though it may contain some information that may be irrelevant to you.

Site Design

    This site was designed to offer fairly objective information in the form of articles and tutorials.  Of course, in comparison to the official Stanford Housing website that focuses merely on absolute dates and facts, this site is much more opinionated, lending itself more to the common stereotypes that abound amongst the undergraduate community.  However, most of the information in the articles and tutorials are well-founded, and difficult to argue against.
    For the more subjective information on how "nice" certain rooms are and the like, you should scroll down to the bottom of each page to see what other people have to say about the dorm.  Each residence has a page describing it, and on it, you will find both factual information, as well as your peers' opinions.  This follows the CourseRank model closely where information comes from the combined knowledge of the masses.

Why there are no interviews on this site.

As mentioned earlier, this site, like CourseRank, depends on consensus of the masses to aggregate common opinion and present it to the user.  If we conduct an interview on a particular person, it will give our words a biased impression.  Since this would decrease our credibility, we have chosen not to conduct interviews and let students do the rest in their own reviews.