All University students who applied for dorm space by the February deadline for next year will receive it, but about 400 students will be placed in temporary housing, a campus housing official said.

More than 8,000 current residence hall students were granted space in the dorms for next year and have the highest priority regarding their room assignments, said William Mulberger, manager of Assignment Office for Campus Residences.

Incoming freshmen, students from other schools and campuses, and off-campus students re-applying to live in the dorms hold lower priority, he said. More than 400 students from these groups will begin the year in temporary housing, he added.

Although Housing and Food Services will not guarantee permanent housing for students applying after the Feb. 24 deadline, it is accepting applications until further notice, he said. About 50 students have filed after the deadline so far, he added.

About 600 of the students who applied for next year's dorm space are expected to cancel their contracts, Mulberger said. Most of these cancellations result from students who are dropped academically from the University, who fail to transfer from the branch campuses and those who leave due to illness or accidents, he said. The expected cancellations are added into housing's formula for determining dorm space, he said.

Residence hall capacity is 12,173, which includes about 400 temporary spaces which are used until permanent space is made available, he said.

Housing and Food Services assign students to temporary housing because the organization is economically self-sufficient and wants to keep average occupancy for the year as close to 100 percent as possible, said Don Arndt, Director of Housing. Temporary housing helps to maintain price stabilty in the dorms, he said.

"It is a built-in protection of the rate structure for those living in the residence halls," Arndt said.

The temporary housing program is designed to balance the large number of students leaving the dorms in the fall and the smaller amount arriving in the spring, he said.

Housing and Food Services reserves 4,130 spaces for entering freshmen and attempts to place about 20 percent freshmen in each dorm to help new students to adjust to college life, Mulberger said.