Each year Stanford students par­ticipate in the ritual process of ranking their housing preferences for where to live during the subsequent year. Housing decisions are often made after careful exploration of the quality of houses, location, room type, dining arrangements, recommendations made by fellow students, and consultation of the previous year’s Undergraduate Housing Draw Statistics. While these statistics change from year to year, they can provide a rough estimate of the desirability of a particular dorm.

The draw works like a lottery where a lower number means that your pref­erences are considered ahead of some­one with a higher number. In general, the higher the draw number cutoff, the less desirable the dorm (since the house did not fill up until it reached a higher draw number). Taking the highest (worst) cutoff number for a dorm as a proxy for the desirability of that dorm, the draw statistics suggest that ethnic theme dorms are less desirable for “non-ethnic” males and females compared to dorms of similar quality, location, room type, and dining arrangements. In many cases, the draw cutoffs for the ethnic theme dorms were close to the maximum number cutoff for either guaranteed or un-guaranteed, making these houses among the least desirable on campus. The only exceptions were females drawing into Lagunita.

The graphs depicted show the draw number cutoffs for the speci­fied residences in 2004, available at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/hds/has/applying/upperclass/ucresults/drawstats.html. The only category that is not separately listed in the draw sta­tistics is Any Lower Row. The Review created this category by averaging statistics from the houses on the row inside the campus drive loop, excluding houses where every cutoff was attached to a priority. The priority system operates differently from the general housing draw because priority trumps the draw number. Students with high­er draw numbers may be able to draw into a relatively desirable house with a poor draw number. For The Review to use these draw numbers would be an inaccurate reflection of the desirability of the dorm. The depicted values are the average numbers for draw group sizes of two, four and six. Groups with draw numbers ranging from 3001-3500 are placed into available housing after the guaranteed draw is complete as this range reflects un-guaranteed housing.