Housing Question

My D has been academically accepted to 5 colleges but still waiting on auditions to see which ones she gets into for music. For those who have done this in the past…did you get a decent dorm/housing choice waiting so long to respond? I am assuming we won’t have our choice until late March early April. Experience from my non-music major kid was the earlier you got your housing in the better choice of dorms. I’m afraid all the dorms near the music school (or the music dorms) will fill up while we wait to hear.

In our experience housing worked differently at different universities. At some, as long as you put in your application by a certain date, your dorm assignment order was randomized. At others, assignment was by order deposit was received. Some of the latter, however, will refund your deposit if you don’t attend there. Check the policies at each school. We ended up doing a mix - we paid deposits that were refunded, we chose to pay one small one that we ended up losing, and we waited on those that had a later lottery system. Luckily, D ended up at one that had a May deadline for the housing lottery.

Comment above is good. We did something similar. I only worried about a big public campus where she could have ended up walking 30+ min to the music school. I did put money down for housing there since she was academically accepted. At LACs I felt that they were small so no dorm area was a problem. It’s worth checking the school policies on refunds and what to do. I didn’t know about a refund policy for the one school but felt the peace of mind was worth the money…and it’s where she ended up so it worked out. In most cases freshmen are guaranteed rooms…it’s just a matter of where…and the music school may be able to guide you.

We paid the deposit at our state flagship to hold a spot but in our case it was refundable up to mid-May. Sounds like you are on the right track. Best wishes!