If your student has their Room Selection Appointment email from Housing & Food Services (HFS), here is the one thing to hold onto: room selection is not one-and-done. Once their appointment opens, your student can select and change rooms through August 31. Today’s pick is a starting point, not a final answer, and knowing that takes most of the pressure off day one.
Getting readyAppointment dayQuick fixesStaying flexibleWho to contact
Getting ready
- Make a backup plan together. This is the best help a family can offer, and a good dinner-table conversation: a few buildings and a few room types your student would be happy with, so they always know their next move.
- Find the Room Selection Appointment email in their UW inbox (or Junk or Spam). The appointment also shows in their housing application in the . When it is time, use the link in that email, not one from an older housing message.
- Chrome and Edge are the browsers that work best with MyHFS.
On appointment day
Everyone in a selection group logs in at once, so pages may load slowly. That is traffic, not a problem with your student’s account.
- Browse buildings first, then look at rooms inside a building they like.
- Slow page? Do not refresh. Most pages load if given a few minutes. Locked out at appointment time? Close the browser, wait about two minutes, and try again.
- A good room now beats a perfect room later. Selecting a solid second choice locks in a spot, and the portal stays open for upgrades all summer.
- Selecting solo? Choosing a space in a partially occupied room preserves empty rooms for roommate groups, which is a kindness to other Huskies.
Quick fixes if the portal acts up
Three things solve most hiccups: an incognito or private window, clearing the browser cache and cookies, or switching to a different browser or device. And if something big breaks, HFS staff monitor room selection live, so a system-wide issue is already being worked on before anyone could report it.
Staying flexible
North Campus is extremely popular and often looks full at first glance. Availability shifts all summer as students change their plans, so a first choice that is gone today may reopen next week. There are no waitlists, and rooms cannot be held or manually assigned for anyone, which keeps the process fair for every student. Checking back through August 31 is the whole strategy.
Talk with your Husky
“Which three buildings would feel like home? And what is the backup plan?”
“When this summer will you check the portal again? Would a reminder from me help or drive you nuts?”
Who to contact
The Student Services Office (SSO) at HFS is the best resource for room selection. Phone lines run busy during selection weeks, so email is often faster for anything that can wait a day, and other HFS offices are not able to help with room selection. To update gender housing preferences before selecting, your student can email hfsinfo@uw.edu, since available rooms are shown based on those preferences.
However this week unfolds, your student will have a place to live and a community waiting in the fall. And if you have helped guide, care for, and love a UW student, you are part of the UW family.