Four University of Wisconsin students created a website to rate and rank the residence halls at UW as a potential tool for new students looking for on-campus housing. Students can rank multiple aspects of residence halls — location, social life, building and food — to contribute to an overall ranking for each residence hall. 

The website — MadHousing — was founded by UW sophomores Aayush Bharadwaj, Pranav Poddutoori, Kevin Phouisangiem and UW senior Adilnur Istekov.

For each dorm, the website lists the location, the year it was built, the number of residents and the number of floors. It includes individual rankings for the location, social life, building and food which contribute to an overall rating out of five for each residence hall. Students are also able to leave written reviews along with a suggestion of whether they would recommend living at the residence hall.

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The name takes inspiration from the commonly used MadGrades, which provides data on grades given out by professors in their classes.

MadHousing was created inside UW’s Software Development Club. At the beginning of the semester, the club told members to create an idea and to try to accomplish it by the end of the year. Bharadwaj and Poddutoori came up with the idea for MadHousing and enlisted Phouisangiem and Istekov to help create the website.

According to Bharadwaj and Poddutoori, the idea for MadHousing stemmed from their freshman year experiences as both students had difficulties researching which dorms were the best to live in when they were freshmen. Because of this, they want the website to be a supplemental resource for prospective UW students looking for housing.

None of the developers had much prior experience with creating websites but were able to learn it on the go, Bharadwaj said. 

Poddutoori hopes students will add reviews to their site when they move out of the residence halls at the end of the year.

UW Housing representative Brendon Dybdahl said the housing department at UW does not endorse the site, as it is not a part of the University.

Dybdahl said the website may have an impact on the preferences for housing at UW, but they don’t have any data connecting the website to the increased popularity of the top-ranked residence halls.

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When asked about some of the lowest-rated residence halls — Humphrey and Jorns — Dybdahl said UW Housing took over these residence halls in the fall of 2020, as they were previously owned by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for their short course program. 

Humphrey, Jorns and Kronshage are all set to receive renovations to their common rooms and utilities, according to the UW-Madison 2023-2025 State Budget Priorities.

Dybdahl said all the dorms provide very similar services and amenities, so the experience students get out of the dorms is going to be extremely similar as well.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to accurately reflect that Humphrey and Jorns are the only residence halls previously owned by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and these residence halls being used for short course programs previously has no bearing on the MadHousing rankings.