Birmingham halls- anyone been through the new allocation process?

[Tree543]

Hi
Birmingham have a new way of allocating hall places, think it was introduced last year. Did anyone's dc experience this last year?
My ds registered for accommodation and had to choose one of the halls but it said that this was just to gauge demand.
If he gets his grades on results day he will be given a time to log onto the website and select his hall and room. I was just wondering how many of them will be available to choose from and if they take your one choice into account and give you similar ones.

DS did it last year. It was fine. Be prepared the invitations to select come out in waves so some people get to choose before others. It does seems what you get to choose from is based on what you initially put. No one he knows ended up anywhere totally opposite to what they wanted . He was choosing less popular accommodation. I think some of the people who want fancy en suite might end up in Selly rather than The Vale.

There were some glitches - the main one being they claim you got to see who else selected the flat and tis wasn't so. You also couldn't go back and check, edit your info, or look again afterwards. I think they will iron these things out.

In his mad haste DS chose a quiet flat by accident but that was no biggie.

It wasn't smooth but it was waaaaay less stressful than other unis' systems.

Thanks for that, very useful. I think it is a better system than being randomly allocated somewhere at least you get some choice hopefully. I can picture some frantic decisions being made while the accommodation disappears before our eyes!
Did your ds have the meal plan?

Yes, I think we might have discussed tis on another thread? Its a bit of a money pit and not all that well administered but he liked not having to think about food and it was ow he met new people at first.