"There are limits because wholesale movements out of a house make it difficult for a House to survive," Dingman says.

All of these restrictions mean the success of a transfer application is anything but a sure thing.

Dingman says the current transfer procedure is a compromise between those people who believe eliminating transfers is "the best shot at building [House] community" and those who want to "swing the door open and allow anybody to go anywhere."

"It ended up being a process that addressed the concerns on both sides," Dingman says.

But in addition, Dingman says he believes the steady transfer rate may indicate that randomization has not turned out to be the demon that some have portrayed it to be.

"Students always talk about how randomization has led to this general blandness, but that's not what the numbers say," Dingman says.

He points to the College's annual survey of graduating seniors, which measures satisfaction with the Houses.

The survey's average rating for House life satisfaction this year--3.6 out of 5--is actually slightly above the average satisfaction before randomization, Dingman says, suggesting that some concerns about the effects of randomization were unfounded.