What it is: A wish letter is a request (by email) to change your housing assignment for the upcoming term after the housing assignment process is over. These are submitted by students who have housing on campus for the spring term, but want to make further changes to their housing. These usually make up about less than 9% of upperclass housing.
The process: First, wish letters are submitted to the House Administrator up through Jan. 10. The House Administrator saves all of the letters.
Over the next few days, the House Administrator reviews wish letters and tries to optimize housing.
After that, wish letters are reviewed by a committee of housing staff (none of whom participated in the housing process) who advise the House Administrator about the letters, asking questions and making sure the process of responding to the letters was fair and well-considered.
Once all agree on the outcomes, the wish letter responses are sent out.
Writing your wish letter: After Jan. 7th, you may email your wish letter to the house administrator (apepper@fas.harvard.edu); please include "wish letter" in the subject line of your email. In your message, CC everyone involved in your decision. For example, if you are asking to trade suites with another group, every member of both suites should be cc'd on the message. If you wish to leave your group and move to a single, you can write to the House Administrator privately.
Just as a reminder, you cannot request to be re-housed to live with anyone who will not be living in Cabot during the Spring Term.
The best wish letters are:
Honest representations of what you (and/or your group) want
Broadly worded or phrased, so that more than one specific room could meet your need (for example, if your wish letter says only that you would like D-41, and there are 3 other groups who also say they want to live in D-41, then it becomes more difficult to meet that need. But if you said "our group of 4 would like to live in an uncrowded quad, preferably in Briggs Hall, but any building will do" that would be easier to accommodate).
Representations of what everyone listed in the wish letter wants, not just what some members want.
A wish letter may be rejected from consideration for the following reasons:
A person mentioned in the wish letter is not going to be on campus for the upcoming Spring Term.
It arrives to the house administrator significantly later than Jan. 10.
Not all members listed in the wish letter are comfortable with the requested change to their housing.
The wish letter includes misrepresentations of the truth.
Housing changes requested by the AEO, Title IX office or Ad Board will take priority over all other wish letters. Wish letters with no such rider attached are organized by their participation number, but are given no other priority-- no claims of injury, insomnia, mental or emotional distress, height, weight, race/ethnicity, sporting interests, personal habits nor similar content of any kind will change the value of one wish letter over another. All such issues are important. All of them are worthy of consideration, and the house will not make a judgement about which request is most worthy. The point of wish letters is to try to maximize happiness for everyone.
If you have a medical or personal need for a housing accommodation, you are encouraged to contact the AEO, who will in turn advise the House on how to handle delicate housing matters.
Cabot will try to accommodate as many wish letters as it can. Please note that Cabot has a responsibility to Harvard College to house everyone assigned to live here, and to be responsive to the needs of the Dean of Students Office. It is not always feasible to leave bedrooms open.