The University will start offering housing opportunities for graduate and fifth-year students in previously undergraduate-exclusive living spaces starting Fall 2025.
This new program, aimed mostly towards fifth-year students, will draw on what was previously undergraduate housing, Executive Director of Residential Life & Housing Services Dan Watts explained in an email to the Campus Times.
“As recent enrollment numbers have fluctuated, we realized that we had some excess capacity in undergraduate housing,” he wrote, “So we were able to offer housing options to students who were not previously eligible to live on campus.”
At the end of the housing lottery, many rising sophomores do not have assigned housing, despite being guaranteed another year of housing.
“They sent out emails about how there were like no doubles left in this and that, and there were like barely anything left, even before the start of freshman housing lottery,” said first-year Kyle Zhang. He continued, “some of my friends ended up only being able to choose […] frat housing. And then I currently still don’t have housing, so I had to fill the little unassigned form.”
Watts indicated that it is important to provide convenient and furnished living spaces for students not looking to live in Rochester permanently, especially given recent increased enrollment in one- and two-year masters programs.
The available accommodations for fifth-year and graduate students this fall are in Southside’s Valentine Housing.
In prior years, graduate students and Take Five students were mostly forbidden from lodging in undergraduate housing, which posed a unique challenge for students not pursuing long-term degrees.
Graduate students had to either arrange for their own non-UR housing , or stay at the apartments in Whipple Park, University Park, or Goler House. All of these are far from campus.
