New Student Housing Assignment Process Overview
Welcome First-Year & Transfer Students!
New Student Housing Assignment Process
Residential Services is excited to welcome you to the first step in choosing your campus residence for the next academic year. To acquaint yourself with the process, we prepared two helpful brochures:
Residential Services will assign you a building and room based on the preferences you share in the housing contract. While every effort will be made to fulfill your preferences, assignments to specific buildings, rooms, or roommates cannot be guaranteed. Last year, over a third of all new students were assigned to their top building preference and approximately 77% received an assignment within their top five building choices. A small percentage of students were assigned to a building outside of their preferences.
Important Housing Process Dates
Room Assignment Dates
| Important Date |
Process |
| March 2 – June 1, 2026 |
Contract open to new students who have submitted their tuition deposit |
| June 2 – July 31, 2026 |
Room assignments processed and verified |
| Early August 2026 |
Assignment notification sent via email |
Residency Requirement
Northwestern has a two-year residency requirement for all incoming first-year undergraduate students. All incoming transfer students are required to live on campus for their first year. For more information about the residency requirement, including the process for requesting housing and/or meal plan accommodations, visit our residency requirement page.
Housing Options
Residential Services offers three housing models: residence halls, residential colleges, and special interest communities. Each provides a unique opportunity for engagement and growth. Regardless of housing model, all students share in a universal residential experience by living in a residential area that includes common services, amenities, programming, staff, and Faculty-in-Residence.
Continuous Housing
Undergraduate residence halls, residential colleges, and special interest communities remain open over Thanksgiving and Spring Break periods. All buildings except for Continuous Housing options close for Winter Break between 12:00 p.m. on December 12, 2026 and 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 2, 2027. If you need to remain on campus over Winter Break, you will need to select a Continuous Housing option.
All Gender Housing
All Gender Housing allows students, regardless of sex or gender, to share a room or suite. You will be able to select All Gender Housing as a preference in the housing assignments process.
Roommate Selection
You have two options for completing the roommate section of the housing contract:
- If you already have a roommate in mind, you will need their name and NetID. You will select roommates in your group for your room assignment. You will use this to form roommate groups directly in our housing system.
- If you do not have a specific roommate in mind, you can either search for roommates based on different preferences directly in our system and form roommate groups that way OR Residential Services will match you with someone based on your responses to roommate matching questions. Learn more about the Roommate Finder.
Meal Plans
Students living in campus residences are required to have a meal plan as a condition of the housing contract. All incoming students will be assigned the Open Access meal plan. For more information about meal plans and dining on campus, please visit the Northwestern Dining website.
Housing Room Rates
Please visit our Room Rates page to view the current academic year's rates. The rates for 2026-2027 will be posted in Spring Quarter 2026.
Housing Cancellation
First- and second-year students may not cancel their housing contract due to the two-year residency requirement. Students will only be released from housing for the following reasons:
- (a) academic dismissal
- (b) disciplinary exclusion from the University
- (c) marriage (a copy of the marriage certificate must be filed)
- (d) induction into military service
- (e) graduation,
- or (f) health, upon written recommendation of the University Health Service.
Get Started!
