Ok, so, there were three things we need to work out before sunday:
1. 12th Roommate
2. Do we go as a group, or do Victor and co. go first?
3. Roommates for each room.

Overview of Discussion:

1. I suggested not filling the 12th slot and hoping no one fills it, as there is a glut of available rooms on campus (perhaps 150 open extra rooms), and it seems unlikely that someone would join a suite with 3 people. The group agreed with my sentiment.

2. Options are as follows. A: Victor goes at 12:00, Orian and Jinzhen go at 1:30. We risk getting split up, either among different halls (very bad), or different floors (still bad), but this guarantees Victor and his 3 roommates gets in Polytech. Option B: Everyone goes at 1:30. We get to strategize as a group to figure out our backup plan should Poly be full. If Poly is not full, we get to choose our 3 rooms to be as close as possible together. Option C: Victor goes at 12:00, but doesn’t necessarily get his room immediately. Victor stays in Sage until 1:30, but if he feels that he wants to secure a Polytech room for himself and his Roommates, he can butt in at any time and get his room. General consensus was that option B is best for the group, but option C is a good compromise. Victor initially favored option A to avoid “wasting” his number, however I believe he now accepts option C.

3. No roommate groupings were discussed. General thought right now is that roommate selection doesn’t really matter, as if we all get into Polytech, we’ll be able to swap as much as we want once the school year starts. However, should we not end up all in Polytech, or should the group be split, inter-hall roommate swaps are not allowed. We didn’t discuss this, however, I do believe we should take another look at this before Sunday.

On the news front, I brought several items to the table:

1. After talking with one of the Reslife directors, I now believe our chances are much better. The director stated that there hasn’t been much interest in Polytech, and he was very, and I mean very excited that a group of 11 of us were signing up. I asked about how lotterys have gone in the past, and he explained that singles always go really fast. Since there are 226 singles on campus next year, and our numbers are low 200s, we’re looking pretty good.

2. He also mentioned that the Polytech dining plan has received an adjustment. The plan now costs $3200 for 200 meals and $800 bonus bucks. This makes the plan much more competitive when compared to other plans. See the appropriate table below.

3. On a last note, I intend on showing up at Sage at 10:00, and either live-blogging, twittering, or doing something else cool so that others can keep up to date on the lottery. Graphs and graphics are abound!

Table 1: Everyone’s Numbers. The Perfect Distribution shows the numbers we would’ve gotten if our random assortment went according to math. The next column shows the +/- of our numbers from the perfect numbers. Red column means we did statistically worse, green columns mean we beat the average.

Table 2: All of the available rooms on campus. The top section showcases the apartment style housing options. Only completely empty rooms/suites are counted in this table. There are many rooms in Sharp, Stackwyck, and RAHPs that are partially filled with 2 or 3 people. Also included is the number of available singles and doubles/triples. Again, there are some doubles/triples that are only partially full with 1 person. Again, these aren’t included. As can be seen, there are 788 completely open rooms. There are probably 100-150 more rooms than this. Since there are 767 people in the lottery, there will be a lot of empty rooms.

Table 3: Meal Plans and their value. These numbers assume that you eat twice a day on weekdays. To view specific meal plan details (hours of availability), check out The Hospitality Services website.

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