What to do about those things you’re “supposed” to be doing once accepted

For good or for ill, d20 (voice—mezzo soprano) applied to 5 1/2 places (the half is a general admission app she finished for TCU but didn’t ever do the music school app). Now, acceptances have started to roll in, and I’m wondering about dorm/housing contracts. Really, I’m only worrying about Baylor and UNT.

Two of the schools she was accepted at (St. Mary’s MN for Musical Theatre and OKCU) are very small and there aren’t many dorm options. She won’t have an issue there because everyone will just get into a dorm.

For UT Austin (not accepted but prescreen is next Saturday), I’ve had a deposit at a private dorm for over a year. So, I’m not worried about that (which is a relief because housing can be an issue in Austin).

I’m mainly wondering if I should go ahead and do the housing deposits at Baylor (where she’s in for the school and for music) and UNT (into the school but audition isn’t until end of February). How are other folks handling this?

At the schools my D and S attend, you couldn’t do housing deposits without first doing enrollment deposit.

My D’s school assigns freshman housing and as long as housing deposit is paid by May 1, she was guaranteed on campus housing.

At my son’s school housing is kind of first come first choice, but he wanted to wait to pay the enrollment deposit until he was accepted to the music program (he was accepted to the university first and then had to audition).
But freshmen have to live on campus so he knew he would get something.

They both ended up doing housing deposit in March and they both got what they wanted.

I had a similar concern at big universities (particularly with a D and safety concerns). I would suggest calling the music admissions people, explain your concern and ask for advice. We did not do this but having been through the process and seeing similar concerns handled differently at different schools, I would suggest a call to admissions and just see if you could get the inside scope on housing. If I had done that I would have found out that the “neighborhood/area” my D wanted by the music school at one big U was the least desirable (unless in music) so there was no need to worry. The area always had availability. I’ve heard different responses on this site that make it clear that there are no uniform policies from school to school. I’ve also heard some schools will give refunds if in the end you don’t enroll.

FYI I did put a housing deposit down on a big U to make sure my D was on the list early. I was willing to lose the money…but with a bit of research (calling) I would have been better informed and maybe would have waited.

My son applied to UNT last year and we thought it was going to be his safe school. Being a music student, your daughter would probably want Bruce Hall for her dorm. That is the one school I put a deposit in for the dorm so that he could get Bruce Hall (it does fill up). Look online to find out the date to do this. It is about $350-400 if I remember correctly. He did not end up attending and we had until either June 1 or July1 to request a refund. We got all but $50 of it back (I knew that going in). It was worth doing to have the piece of mind that he would have Bruce Hall. Let me know if you have additional questions.

Other places it might not be as big of a deal.

p.s. I think the date for registering for the dorm was sometime in February or March.