Four hundred and seventy-six students took advantage of Housing and Dining’s new early room registration period for the fall 2011 semester as of Wednesday.

“It has far exceeded my expectations,” said Mike Stang, executive director of Housing and Dining. “This is way more people than I would have ever imagined.”

Housing and Dining created the early sign up because many students begin to look for off-campus housing during the fall, Stang said.

They wanted to allow students to sign up for on-campus housing earlier in order to give them another option. Room selection normally starts in the spring semester.

“Rather than losing students simply because we didn’t have the process together early enough, we have moved up the process,” Stang said. “For those students who know where they want to live and want to be able to lock in that decision now, it seemed like it was a prudent approach to allow students to do that.”

While some students have taken part in the process, others don’t believe that the early sign-up actually influenced students’ housing opinions.

Alaine Coleman, sophomore business administration major, currently lives in Neptune East, but is moving off-campus next year. She doesn’t think having a fall housing sign-up will change students’ minds.

“If a student is going to live off-campus, even if they have an open fall sign-up, students that have chosen to go off-campus will go off-campus,” Coleman said.

The newly renovated Grant C tower, which will open in fall 2011, had 92 people sign up during the early registration period.

“This is also good news because we were hopeful that students were excited for a new renovated residence hall,” Stang said. “The fact that students are signing up to live there is a real good sign for us.”

The early registration period is not over, as the general sign-up will continue until Dec. 22. Students can still register now or sign up during the spring registration period, which begins Jan. 31.

Students that register now or in the spring are no longer guaranteed to be able to live in their current room again next fall, because it is possible for someone else to have already registered for their room, said Blanche McHugh, associate director of residential administration.

“But if there’s no one signed up for that student’s room, then they certainly can still sign up for it in the spring,” McHugh said.

Housing and Dining is pleased with how the early registration for fall 2011 process has gone this semester, and will be trying it again, Stang said.

“We will do it again next fall for sure,” Stang said. “I think it will take us at least a year or two to assess whether it is working or not. What we will want to do is to talk to students about if this [process] works.”