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25-17 - Guaranteed First-Year Residence at the University of Guelph
The BFO Board of Directors can understand the uncertainty and frustration with applying to a post-secondary institution, being accepted, but residence not being guaranteed for first-year students. Based on the feedback received by the university with students beginning their studies during the 2024/25 academic year, the University of Guelph did make changes for the 2025/26 academic year.
If you were an Ontario high school applicant, residence was guaranteed if you received an offer of admission on or before March 1, 2025, and you submitted your residence application and deposit of $750 by April 15, 2025. If you received an offer of admission after March 1, 2025, or submitted your residence application and deposit after April 15, 2025, you were entered into a residence lottery.
Starting on May 1, 2025, and continuing through June 2, 2025, Ontario High School applicants who submitted a completed residence application were notified within 48 hours of submission if they have a confirmed residence offer, or if they will be placed on a residence waitlist.
While this is not an outright guarantee of residence for all first-year students, it did provide incoming students, and their parents, with a little more certainty regarding on-campus student housing.
The University of Guelph’s Board of Governors recently approved the Real Estate Land Use Vision and Strategy that will create new housing, public spaces, research and commercialization on University-owned land. This includes the addition of more than 4,000 new student housing beds by 2035. Hopefully this will allow the university to once again guarantee residence for not just first-year students enrolled in the Ontario Agricultural College, but all first-year students wanting to live on-campus.
We appreciate this resolution being brought forward and will be sure to reiterate the contributions BFO is making in the area of research and the importance of agriculture at the University of Guelph when meeting with its senior officials.