I hate UCLA housing services. I have had nothing but terrible problems with them. I suspect that the office is actually run by monkeys. They take everyone's housing applications and throw darts at them. The ones that get hit get processed correctly, and the other ones get thrown away.

My UCLA Housing Saga

Freshman year:

I applied for a two-person room in Canyon Point with my best friend at the time, Lauren. We made sure to select all the same living preferences and put each other down as requested roommates so maximize our chances of getting placed together. As I had guaranteed housing because of my scholarship, I assumed it would be a no-brainer to give me the room that I wanted. We were each offered different three-person rooms.

Sophomore year:

No problems, amazingly.

Junior year:

My roommate and I both had the same scholarship so we were guaranteed a spot in the university apartments. However, current students apply into a lottery for university apartments, so we weren't sure what to do. I went down to the housing office to ask. They told me to apply for housing using the dorm housing application. This didn't really make sense since all the preference choices on that applications were for dorms, but I filled it out anyway. Time passed, and I received an e-mail telling me that room signup (for the DORMS) would be happening and giving me a signup number for it. I was confused, since I didn't want to live in the dorms, so I went down to the housing office again to ask. When I told the guy who helped me that I was a Regents' scholar, he told me that i didn't have to do anything and that he was going to call all the regents scholars in to sign up for rooms before they had the lottery. He didn't. A few weeks later my roommate got an email saying that she had been offered a room in one of the apartments. I got nothing. I went to the housing office AGAIN. They told me that my housing offer had been cancelled because I had missed room signup. In the end I had to write a note requesting that my offer be reinstated, despite the fact that it was THEIR FAULT. I got the room I wanted, in the end.

Senior year:

This time the application process went smoothly. I got an email telling me when room signup was and that I would receive my signup number later, but I never received my number. On the day of room signup I called the housing office and asked what the deal was. (It was about 9:30 at this time.) They told me to go on down to room sign up right then and that it would be fine and I could retrieve my number there. When I got there, I got my number and waited around for a while, and finally found out that the signup time for my number was not until 11:30. This was the very last time slot, meaning that I never had a signup number to begin with--they just put me in the last group. By the time I got to sign up, the room type I wanted was gone. So I just signed up for the same kind of room I had this past year. Several weeks later I got an email saying that my housing offer had been terminated because I had failed to make my initial payment before the deadline. Nevermind the fact that I had never received any correspondance regarding this payment. I had expected to receive such information by mail or email, like I did the year before. Apparently a lot of people had this problem. So, I went down to the housing office (my second home) and had to fill out ANOTHER housing application. At this point my offer was reinstated and I made my initial payment. However, I could not choose my room number like I had at room signup. The room I wanted was still available, though, and I was told that I could get it back by submitting a change of assigment request. I did this. Now it is a number of months later and I JUST received an email saying that my request could not be fulfilled. So, the monkeys at housing just ignored my request for an obviously open room that was supposed to be mine anyway, waited around for a few weeks until transfer students were in, put them in my room, and then told me about it. Thanks a lot, housing.

I expect many more problems to come.