Room assignments for first-year students

Welcome to life on The Hill! During your first year on campus, you’ll be meeting new people and making tons of friends — and living with your fellow classmates is one of the best ways to provide this synergy.

We have dedicated several residence halls on campus to first-year students. You’ll be living with your peers, meeting them in hallways and in common rooms. And those residence halls are sited on quads with housing for all students — so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to meet and learn from older students who can guide you.

Housing preference application

The first step in making Denison your new home is to complete your housing preference form.

You will answer a lot of questions in the form; questions about how you like to live and socialize (clean and organized or messy and relaxed?). And you’ll have the option of choosing your roommates, or ask us to match you with people who have similar preferences. It’s important to answer each question honestly! While every effort is made to accommodate your housing preference, we cannot guarantee that all of you will receive your first choice.

First-year students are placed in first-year residence halls. Rooms are double, triple, quad, and larger. We have a very limited number of single rooms, but please bear in mind that we must accommodate medical needs for singles first.

Anticipated First-Year Communities are Crawford Hall, Smith Hall, Shorney Halls, and Beta House. In your housing preference form, please rank your preference. You will not be able to request specific halls.

Look for the housing preference form in the MyHousing Portal. You can find detailed instructions on filling the form in MyDenison. After completing the form, you will have the option to select roommates.

Deadlines to submit the housing preference form:

Semester

Form Opens

Form Due

Notification

Fall

March 1

June 15

Early August

Spring

October 1

November 1

Early January

Roommate matching

Learning to live with someone else can be…challenging. You’ll discover new ways of looking at things and show others what it’s like to see the world through your eyes — so we encourage you to allow Denison to match you and your roommate(s). But if you want to, you can submit roommate requests in your roommate portal (after both roommates complete the housing preference form). These requests must be mutual and received by June 15. Roommate requests received after this date will not be granted.

Once housing assignments are made, you won’t be able to make changes until the end of the second week of classes, and as space allows. It takes time to get to know your new roommate(s), so please take the first two weeks to learn about each other, write a roommate agreement together, and get settled.

If you request a room change, your community advisor or community coordinator will first facilitate a roommate mediation. Most conflicts can be resolved with a conversation and some expectation-setting.

You can find more information about roommate matching in MyDenison.

Room assignments for returning students

Rising seniors, juniors, and sophomores are housed through an online housing selection process each spring semester. Returning students are guaranteed a housing assignment within campus housing, but not a specific space or type of room.