133 first years enter FYRE process
New House, New Vassar, and Burton Conner are most popular FYRE destinations
ARUN WONGPROMMOON - THE TECH
133 first-year students entered the First-Year Residence Exchange (FYRE) process that facilitates residence hall switches this year. The FYRE process concluded after four days of Residence Exploration (REX) on Aug. 31. 74 first-year students successfully switched residence halls.
The number of first years opting to FYRE rose sharply from last year when 89 students attempted to FYRE and is comparable to 2019 when 121 students attempted to FYRE. First years had a 55% FYRE success rate this year, a decrease from last year’s 70% success rate but an increase from 2019 when 47% successfully FYREd.
Housing and Residential Services (HRS) Senior Communications Manager Zachary Tsetsos wrote in an email to The Tech that first-year residents “were most interested in moving to New House, New Vassar, and Burton Conner through the FYRE process.” Among the 74 successful moves, the most popular destinations were Burton-Conner (13), Next House (12), and East Campus (11), while most students moved out of Next House (15), East Campus (12), and Maseeh Hall (10).
Due to the reopening of Burton-Conner, there was “a slight decline in the typical number of first-year residents assigned to each building” since the incoming class was spread across eleven, instead of ten, residence halls, according to Tsetsos.
The planned renovations of East Campus — scheduled to begin in Summer 2023 — also affected HRS’s approach to building assignments: Tsetsos wrote that “in consultation with the East Campus house leadership and DormCon, only first-year students who selected East campus as one of their top-three building preferences were assigned to the community.”