The Stanford Housing Draw

The Stanford Housing Draw is a complex social mechanism that assigns students to residences based on students' preferences. This kind of mechanism belongs to the wider class of matching problems that have been studied in economics. But in the presence of theme houses, priorities, draw groups, etc., the complexity of the Stanford Housing Draw far exceeds the housing assignment problems studied in the theoretical literature. In this talk, we try to bring together theory and practice. We look at the specific features of the situation at Stanford and Stanford's current mechanism, applying insights from the theoretical literature to understand the current system and suggest possible improvements.