UK Housing is making the move to college easier for students living on campus next year.

Room Selection is a new step in UK’s housing application and allows students to pick a specific room in their assigned building during their time slot. A pilot group of UK students used Room Selection on May 25.

According to Melissa Pero, Auxiliary Services’ information technology manager, the rest of Early Action Track students’ time slots will begin between June 7 and June 16 and time slots for Regular Decision Track students will be between June 16 and June 23.

About 5,620 students who have applied to live on campus next fall have been assigned a time slot for Room Selection.

“Once the date and time of the assigned time slot arrives, each student will be able to log in to the housing application via the myUK portal and select an available room from the assigned building,” Pero wrote in an email to the Kentucky Kernel.

Students in both Early Action and Regular Decision Tracks should have already received Room Selection time slots in an email from UK Housing.

Pero wrote that the Room Selection is a feature from StarRez, the student housing software UK Housing uses. Room Selection has been used at other universities and because of the positive feedback, UK Housing decided to add the step to the housing application “to improve the student experience related to room assignments.”

“Allowing students to self-select a room gives them more control over their room assignments by allowing them to pick the specific room of their choice,” Pero wrote. “Students are able to assign mutually confirmed roommates at the time of room selection to ensure they are assigned to the same room as preferred roommates.”

Room selection allows for transparency in the process because students can see all available rooms in their assigned building during their time slot for Room Selection. Students can also see profile information of other students who may be already assigned to their room of choice if the other students’ privacy preferences allow.

Before this step in the application process, students should also confirm any roommate requests they may have so students can pull in roommates to their room of choice.

Pero wrote that feedback from the pilot group of students was positive and said Room Selection was easy to use.

“We hope that students are as excited about this new feature as we are. Our goal is to provide the best experience possible to students applying to UK Housing,” Pero wrote. “We feel this is a great addition to the process that will improve the experience for students by allowing greater control over the room assignment process.”