Many incoming students who want to stay in NIU residence halls next year may be out of luck because of high demands.

Residence halls have room for 6,153 students. Out of the available spaces for next fall, about 3,000 will go to students currently living in the residence halls.

The remaining 3,153 spaces will go to incoming freshmen and transfer students, said Mike Stang, manager of Residential Administration.

With more than 10,000 new students already admitted for next fall, the residence halls could leave many in the cold.

The scenario is unlikely, but Student Housing and Dining Services already has taken steps to prevent problems, Stang said.

Earlier this month, the residence halls sent out “intent to return” forms, asking all students who planned on returning to the residence halls to fill out the form. The deadline to turn them in passed on Monday, and about 2,600 forms returned, Stang said.

The forms were used to gauge how many students wanted to return because last year, many students had to be turned down as late as March and April. NIU did not want to repeat that, Stang said.

The 2,600 students who turned in a form are guaranteed a room, as are about 400 additional students who currently live in the residence halls, he added.

University policy requires that all incoming freshmen live in the residence halls.

As of last week, NIU had admitted 8,500 freshmen for fall, but not all of those students are expected to actually come to NIU, Director of Admissions Bob Burke said.

Typically, 32 percent of freshmen admitted to NIU actually show up in the fall, Burke said.

Last year, NIU admitted 9,500 freshmen. Of those, only 3,200 attended classes last fall, Burke said. Students have until May 1 to tell NIU if they will be attending classes in the fall.

If a similar percentage of students attends NIU again this fall, as administrators expect, the freshmen should not have any problems getting rooms, Stang said.

The same can’t be said for transfer students, who do not have high priority when it comes to choosing rooms.

“The way the priority system is set up, we would have to turn away additional transfer students,” Stang said.

Transfer students’ priority ranks fourth and eighth, respectively, depending on whether they graduated high school in 2003 or prior to 2003.

Some students probably will be turned away, Stang said.

Turning away students who want to stay in the residence halls is a relatively new problem at NIU. Until five years ago, when Stevenson Towers were renovated, there were up to 500 empty beds at times, Stang said.

NIU goes as far as overbooking the halls by about 100 students in anticipation of losing some students in the first few weeks of the academic year, Stang said.