UNCW taking on the challenge of housing more students than anticipated

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — UNCW requires first and second year students to live on campus. 

This year, the university is seeing a larger in-coming class of freshman — now putting roughly 10% of the freshman class not in an ideal dorm situation. 

As of right now, there are a little more than 5,200 housing contacts, while there are only just a little more than 5,000 beds available across UNCW’s residence halls. 

This leaves about 250 students without their anticipated dorm. 

Executive director of Housing and Residency Life, Kevin Meaney, said this has happened before. 

“Ultimately, I think it speaks to our popularity and high quality of our programs. Students want to come here and just like you said every other university does the same thing. You have to accept more students than you have seats for and you typically rely on getting a certain yield and this year, our yield is high,” Meaney said. 

The university plans to add an extra bed to double and triple rooms to accommodate this challenge. 

Assignments are based on how early applicants submitted housing requests.