<p>Okay, if you want my advice, housing isn’t a great situation. Recently, Columbia got a huge surge of applicants. In order to keep the admission rate high (so it wasn’t like 3%), Columbia had to accept more students and increase class sizes faster than they could build new dorms. So graduate students, who don’t have guaranteed housing, have been kicked out of their apartments so that undergrads have a place to live. That said, first year is the best year for housing. I advise living in John Jay in a single because a new student needs the quite space. The second year, one should try to be an RA, which means you will get your own room and sometimes an extra room in which a friend can live. The other option one has as a rising sophomore is to live in special interest housing. I recommend applying for as many SIC’s as you can. You can also live in the LLC, but it’s a competitive application process in sophomore year. Anyway, as a sophomore, you have to go through a lottery to get into a place to live. Sophomores have the least point values and typically get small, crammed doubles in McBain. That said, if you follow my above instructions you can decrease the chances of being stuck in a blind double sophomore year.</p>