Mississippi State University’s Housing department is cutting back to accommodate the incoming freshman class for the 2015-16 school year.
Due to the significant increase of incoming freshman, housing had to cut a tight rope when it came to allowing upperclassman to live on campus; 480 upper-class students are without housing.
Under university rules, the Department of Housing and Residence Life has to accommodate all incoming freshmen.
Fred Mock, Interim Director of Housing, said freshmen are first priority.
“One of the reasons we require freshman to live on campus is they tend to do better in school their first year, they tend to continue school and their GPA is a little higher,” Mock said. 
There are currently 15 residence halls. The housing department is now building two new residence halls that will house 752 beds and will be complete next summer.
Upperclassmen who want to stay on campus next school year have to complete the online process designated for upperclassmen called R.S.V.P.
 
If they are selected to sign up for housing they are informed via email and given a certain day and time to choose the residence hall of their choice. This process usually takes place in the spring.
There are two different application processes both entering freshman and upperclassmen must go through to apply for a dorm. 
In an interview, Lari Wright, the associate director of administrative operations, explained how the process goes.
“For first time freshmen, when they apply for housing, it is primarily based on the day they submit their application into Mississippi State University,” Wright said. “We will take that date and time stamp and push that over into our system and carry throughout all the application process. There are other factors involved such as if they are a member of the Day One community, honors college, band participating in living learning community we set a number of beds aside for those privileges.”  
Upperclassmen have first pick for residence halls, however,  that is not guarantee that they will get a room. 
The Dean of Students’ office maintains an off campus housing referral system. Housing can not endorse a particular apartment off campus, but they can provide information about apartment complexes throughout town.
“The upperclassmen have already been informed if they are getting a room or not for the upcoming school year. The freshman right now know they have a room, but they don’t know what building yet,” Mock said.
Not all of the upperclassmen who were approved for housing will accept their contracts.
“We have to calculate what we think the size of the freshmen class will be in August, It’s hard to do, because we don’t know how many, until everyone is here,” Mock said “We look at the admission’s data and try to figure out how many freshmen we need to house. They are all guaranteed a room, then what is left is available for upper-class housing.”  
Dante Hill, associate director of residence life, wishes there was more room for everyone to stay on campus.
“I would love for there to be a mixture of freshman, sophomores, juniors, and seniors to balance out everything,” Hill said. “So they could all help each other and learn from each other, instead of it being a hall full of freshman.”