Admitted Students: About Housing

Welcome to Rutgers!

Your college experience starts with making yourself at home on campus. Living on campus will provide you with extraordinary and fulfilling experiences, and new friends that will last a lifetime.

To begin your exploration of housing options at Rutgers, start with the information below:

Housing at Rutgers: The Basics
About Rutgers' Living/Learning Environments
       Livingston Campus
       Douglass Campus
       Cook Campus
       College Avenue Campus
       Busch Campus

Housing at Rutgers: The Basics

At Rutgers you will have the best of all possible worlds where you will be encouraged to take advantage of many wonderful opportunities and resources. You will, of course, be a member of the large and varied university community, but your campus will provide you with a smaller community of 2000-4000 students, and your dorm world of 150-300 students will be more intimate still.

The specifics you need to know about housing at Rutgers will be detailed in your application/housing contract, but to begin:

You may choose to live on any of our five New Brunswick campuses.
You will be able to rank your campus choices in order of your preference.
Housing assignments are made on a “first-come, first-served” basis.
Most of our first-year students are housed in first-year halls. First-year halls give you an opportunity to live with students who, like you, are experiencing Rutgers for the first time.
Special interest housing programs -- such as the arts, political science, languages, and the global village -- mix first-year and upper-class students. You will find more information about these enriching programs in the housing application.
Whatever campus you choose to live on, you are only a short bus or bike ride from the other campuses. It is all available to you.

Rutgers Living/Learning Environments

Every campus has a student center, libraries, convenience stores, and dining halls. However, each campus environment has characteristics that make it special.

How will you know what campus you want to live on? You may remember our campuses from your visit here, but to help you consider your options more fully, here is a brief description of each:

Livingston Campus

Livingston Campus is a lively, active campus focused on first-year students. It is home to many of the social science departments, the Rutgers Business School, and the Center for Applied and Professional Psychology. Livingston Campus provides you with a short walk to basketball games at the Louis Brown Athletic Center, quiet strolls through the Rutgers Ecological Preserve, and terrific productions at the student-founded Livingston Theater.

Douglass Campus

Douglass Campus is the home of the university’s women-centered programs and departments, as well as the Douglass Residential College, which is dedicated to the promotion of global women’s leadership. Women, who affiliate with the Douglass Residential College as well as those who choose not to, may live in this park-like setting. Highlights of the campus include the renowned Eagleton Institute of Politics, the theaters of Mason Gross School of the Arts, and the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. Douglass campus residents can live in the Global Village, study under trees at Passion Puddle, and be serenaded by students performing at Nicholas Music Center.

Cook Campus

Farms, gardens, and research centers are home to the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences (SEBS) on Cook Campus. Campus highlights include the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, the beautiful Rutgers Gardens and Helyar Woods, and the Center for Advanced Food Technology. The campus is in close proximity to all student services as well as to most SEBS classes.

College Avenue Campus

This campus is a vibrant and lively community anchored by the historic heart of Rutgers, known as Old Queens. It is within walking distance of shops, restaurants, and theaters in New Brunswick, and the train to New York and Philadelphia. The Voorhees classroom mall provides a traditional university environment, and the Zimmerli Art Museum is available to you whether you are an art history major working on a research paper or a science student desiring a moment of cultural enrichment.

Busch Campus

Busch Campus is home to the Rutgers football stadium and provides a high-tech and suburban atmosphere focusing on the academic areas of physics, pharmacy, life science, math, computer science, and engineering. Visit the telescope on open viewing nights, attend a seminar at the Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, get in a swim at the Sonny Werblin Recreation Center, cheer on the Knights soccer team at Yurcak Field, or play a game of pool at the student center.

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