The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1 - 186

felt on receiving notice of on-campus housing
placement: "I was really relieved when they
said I could live in [a] dorm, just because I was
kind of hectic. And there [were] a lot of people
that were looking for housing off campus."
While opting to go on the housing wait list was
less challenging than looking for an off-campus apartment, participants felt as though the
wait time was too long and they were anxious
about whether or not they would have a place
to live. As Emily said, the thing she worried
most about in waiting to ﬁnd out about oncampus housing was that "all the off-campus
places were already taken."
Of all the challenges in the transfer process,
locating housing was cited most often as the
student's biggest one. While limited on-campus
housing was available, students still endured
a long wait period that left them stressed and
anxious. Those seeking off-campus housing

Having been conditioned to making
friends in the residence halls, they
were left surprised and socially
encumbered when they did not
have an instant connection with
other people in their apartment
or residence hall. The lack of
immediate social connection left
the large majority of them feeling
lonely, isolated, and unsure of how
to make friends.
186

faced limited choices and a strenuous process
trying to ﬁnd a good living arrangement. These
experiences with securing housing shaped the
experience these students had in transitioning
and adjusting to their new institution.

Not a First-year Residence Hall Community
All the students in this study lived on campus
in a residence hall during their ﬁrst years of
college, and these experiences enabled them to
make friends and build community early on in
their collegiate careers. They had an expectation
that the living environment at their transfer institution would be similar and would provide
them with this same type of social connection.
Having been conditioned to making friends
in the residence halls, they were left surprised
and socially encumbered when they did not
have an instant connection with other people
in their apartment or residence hall. The lack
of immediate social connection left the large
majority of them feeling lonely, isolated, and
unsure of how to make friends. These feelings
were particularly inﬂuential because they had
never experienced this challenge before and
were disappointed. They longed for the experience they had in their ﬁrst-year residence halls
where it was easy to make friends and they did
not have to worry about or put much effort into
building social connections.
Carla portrayed the difference between her
ﬁrst-year residence hall experience and her experience as a transfer:
It's harder when you don't live on campus,
'cause often a lot of where you make friends
is your freshman dorm. A lot of people
freshman year they come, and they meet
people in their dorm, and they meet people in
freshman orientation . . . because everybody

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 41, No. 2 & Volume 42, No. 1

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