The first step is to apply!
The 2023-24 applications are available now.
Graduate students, medical and dental residents, post-doctoral scholars (“postdocs”), visiting graduate researchers (VGRs), and medical and dental fellows are eligible for Graduate and Family housing. Graduate Students may access the application by logging on with their logon credentials. Medical/dental residents, post-doctoral scholars, visiting graduate researchers and fellows must submit a request to verify UCLA affiliation by completing the form found here.
Due to limited availability and a high demand for housing, we cannot guarantee housing for all applicants. Instead, we use a lottery and wait list system to issue housing offers to graduate students and Family housing applicants. Submitted applications are assigned lottery numbers, which dictate the order in which housing offers are made. Lottery number assignments are made in early July of the application year for all applications received by July 1. Applications received after July 1st will be assigned lottery numbers based on the date submitted. This system ensures that early admits receive no advantage over later admits in consideration for housing.
For postdocs, lottery number assignments are made based on the date the application is completed. This differentiation reflects that fellow, postdoc, and VGR appointments do not coincide with the academic term.
Departmentally allocated graduate students are given the highest priority and are offered first. After them, graduate students and residents are considered. Post-doctoral scholars, fellows, and visiting graduate researchers will only be considered once all students and residents have been accommodated.
For all new incoming tenants of Graduate Housing, a 3-year eligibility cap is in place, meaning students can reside in university facilities for a maximum of three (3) total years. For Family housing, eligibility and maximum tenancy is determined by each tenant’s normative time to degree as declared by their respective departments/programs of study.
Lottery offers will begin in early July. Offers will be made on a regular basis depending on space availability. In this manner, lottery housing offers will continue to be made throughout the entirety of the academic year until mid-April of the following year when inventory is allocated to the next year's incoming applicants. Once on the wait list, you can check your waitlist position periodically by clicking to the “Application Status” page of your housing application. Waitlist positions will be made available beginning in early July.
The priority order for the housing wait list is as follows:
1. Graduate students and family-housing eligible undergraduate students
2. Medical and dental residents
3. Fellows and Postdoctoral Scholars**
4. VGRs
**Postdoc Housing (single and family)
Postdocs are eligible for university student housing. However, postdocs do have lower priority than students. We are the only school in the UC system that has a contract with the postdoctoral union that includes housing for postdocs. As part of our agreement with the postdoctoral union, Housing Services pledges to continuously house a minimum of one hundred postdocs. For this reason, our postdoc applicants have their own wait list that is ordered based on when the application is submitted rather than on a lottery basis. This helps ensure that we continue to meet our goal of housing one hundred postdocs, meaning that once one postdoc vacates housing, we will offer to an awaiting postdoc from the postdoc wait list. While this does allow us to make offers year round, please keep in mind that we expect the demand for housing will continue to outweigh our inventory of housing and thus we still anticipate only offering housing to a very small fraction of our postdoc applicants each academic year. On average, less than half of postdocs that apply each academic year receive a housing offer.
