Housing change deadline is June 1

This is just a reminder that this Sunday, June 1, 2008 is the deadline for changing any preferences on your housing application in ThickEnvelope. This includes roommate preferences, room type preferences (single, double, triple), residence hall preferences, rankings, etc. After June 1, 2008 it will not be possible to make any changes to your housing application. Also we'd like to remind you that roommate preferences are considered to be more important than any other preference – room type or residence hall.

Class of 2012 website is ready!

https://classof2012.uchicago.edu/

Thus begins the long, slow process of extricating you from the grasp of the admissions office and putting you in the capable hands of the College Programming Office. The Class of 2012 website has bulletin boards (ours will eventually go down), all the summer mailings (so no calling me if you didn't get something... it's right there), the forms you need to complete before arriving, and other fun interactive stuff.

Students who were admitted from the waiting list

First, congratulations on your admission! Second, you do not have access to ThickEnvelope! Because you are a member of a such a small and elite group, you will have to fill out your enrollment and housing forms on paper.

Claiming your email address

Students can now claim their email addresses here. You just need to have a social security number.

If you're an international student, I can email you your student ID so that you, too, can claim your email address. Just email me at question@phoenix.uchicago.edu.

Also... make your own academic sentence. Now you don't even need to go here!

Two Scav Hunt videos

With a bonus incentive--videos that get the most views will be televised on Channel 55 in Chicago.

Blues Brothers-style public dancing at Chicago's Daley Center

Does anyone feel like they just saw a Feist video?

Riding a Unicyle on a Monowheel

That one is cool for a few seconds, and then there's just a lot of screaming. Our students are so supportive!

The Scav Hunt

We were going to do a Scav Hunt post... but then we were looking at Facebook, and we realized that other people took way more and way better photos than we did. So, go to Facebook and look at Will Deitz and Grace Chapin's photos. You should be able to see them from inside the UChicago network. (Oh, and you can claim your email address and join the network now.) Hooray for other people doing our work for us, and better than we could!

It's not just you - no one can log into ThickEnvelope

No one has been able to log into ThickEnvelope today, and we believe it's because of a routine upgrade to our database. We are working on the problem and hope to have you logging in by noon.

UPDATE: We're just going to leave ThickEnvelope down for the whole day, but it will come back up by tomorrow morning.

Your bumper sticker

If you received a letter from Deans Art and Boyer with no bumper sticker, just email me your name at questions@phoenix.uchicago.edu and I'll make sure you get your bumper sticker and whatever I have lying around the office that is flat and would be funny to mail to a random person.

Scav Hunt started!

So, you've all enrolled. You now have nothing to do. Since we're not trying to get you to enroll any more, neither do we. But you know who really has nothing to do, because he isn't an admissions counselor any more? Austin Bean. So we've given him a camera and he will once again photograph Scav Hunt for us, which started last night at midnight.

I think the most time-consuming and difficult thing to do is be a University of Chicago undergraduate. The second most is to be an admissions counselor at any school. The third most is to be a graduate student, and that's what Austin is. Therefore he has enough time to do this.

Austin Bean made some great posts on Scav Hunt last year, all of which you can read here in chronological order (like we said, you have nothing else to do):

1. Countdown to ScavHunt
2. Scav Hunt - Thursday Morning 8:30 - 9:00 a.m.
3. Scav Hunt 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
4. Inside the ScavenHQ: Snell-Hitchcock
5. Item 320: The Masque of Youth
6. Back to the ScavQuarters: Max Palevsky
7. Weekend Update (with no pictures)
8. ScavUpdate - Monday
9. Chronological ScavHunt Recap
10. Saturday AM: Boat "Race"
11. Saturday PM: The Scav Olympics!
12. Saturday PM/Monday AM
13. JUDGMENT DAY!

Austin apparently didn't have anything to do last year either.

And finally... here is the Scav Hunt website! And the list for this year, available as a PDF! By linking to this list the University of Chicago admissions office does not endorse or condone any items or the language used to describe the items on this list.

But if you really want to laugh, you should read this puff piece on me and this blog. Not a shining example of journalism... and not all correct. It was Austin who played ding-dong ditch on President Zimmer. And I'm not just saying that because he doesn't work here any more. But I am proud that it is currently the most popular article, just before "U of C acceptance rate hits record low."

Edit housing options IS working!

Yay!

Remember, all changes to housing options must be done by June 1 so we can match roommates and place people.

"Edit housing options" is not working!

People have been emailing me about the fact that when you try to edit your housing options, you're just redirected to your homepage on ThickEnvelope. This is to let you know that I know, and we're working on it. Thanks!

And thanks to everyone who enrolled! We're going to have a great class. The best class ever, as Ted will tell you when you arrive on September 20.