How the ballot works

What do the colours mean?

S-staircase sets?

These are allocated separately, by pulling pairs of names of students interested in living there out of a hat. These pairings do not have to be students in the same year group. The sets cannot be chosen during the Room Ballot itself, as they will already have been allocated.

Why are some rooms already taken?

Rooms taken will be for incoming freshers, returning linguists or for other reasons as decided by Tutorial (e.g. musicians, some exchange students, etc).

The web interface

Will I be able to see which rooms are taken and by whom?

Yes. The ballot interface is very similar to the room database interface. The differences are:

1.      Rooms that are available to choose will have a “Choose this Room” link next to them (when it’s your turn).

2.      There is an “Add to shortlist” link to allow you to narrow down your list of rooms and set up the autochooser.

How does the autochooser work?

If you are busy during your turn, you can create a shortlist of rooms and enable the autochooser. When your turn arrives, the following will happen:

1.      You will be texted and emailed by the autochooser which will have selected the room highest on your shortlist that is still available.

2.      If you are happy with this: sit back and relax!

3.      Otherwise you have 10 mins to log into the website and update your choice.

4.      After 10 mins your room choice will be confirmed and the ballot will proceed.

Possible problems

I am not around during my slot. What do I do?

There is a strong possibility that you will be able to choose earlier (if people choose quickly then then everyone can start picking earlier). It is suggested that:

1.      You follow the ballot as long as possible, so that you have some idea of what rooms have been taken.

2.      You setup a shortlist and enable “autochoose”.

The website has a strange error message, what do I do?!?!

Don’t panic! Look at how to contact the computing officer or the JCR VP.