Forty-seven third-year students have been offered a spot on the Lawn for the 2023-24 academic year, out of a pool of 152 applicants. The seven remaining rooms on the Lawn are reserved for specific organizations or awarded to students based on a number of different accolades.
The application for the Lawn rooms came to a close Jan. 9. Requirements to live on the lawn include full-time undergraduate status and in good academic standing with their school. There is no minimum GPA. The applications were reviewed by the Lawn Selection Committee, a student-run committee composed of 64 fourth-year students — 32 ex-officio students and 32 selected at random.
Third-year College student Rana Richie was offered a Lawn room and said she is excited to live in an active community of fourth-years who have similar interests to her. Richie expects to host events for fellow fourth-years, similar to how she did when she was a Resident Advisor for first-year students. Some events Richie wants to host are different cultural events, such as Diwali and Chinese New Years, as she did for first-years.
Richie is a part of the Daniel Hale Williams society, which is a pre-health society for minority students. She said she plans on opening her residence to people who are looking for advice.
“I would like to invite [society members] to my lawn room and give them advice and help them with their journey to medical school or dental school,” Richie said.
The application pool this year follows a downward trend in applications — this year saw 37 fewer applications than 2021 and 69 fewer applications than 2020.
This year, consistent with a smaller applicant pool, fewer students of color were offered a Lawn room. For the 2023-24 academic year, 36 percent of Lawn rooms were offered to students of color — compared to 47 percent last year.
Eight Lawn rooms were offered to African American students — 17 percent of the offers compared to last year’s 20 percent. Seven offers, or 15 percent, were awarded to Asian or Asian Pacific Islander students, five fewer offers than the previous year. Offers to Latinx students increased to a total of five rooms — or 11 percent of the total — which is two more than last year's offers.
Third-year College student Maddie Stokes remembers visiting the Lawn for the first time and being impressed. She said the Lawn allows people to meet others from many different areas of the University.
“From everything I've heard, it's such a great community,” Stokes said. “Of course, it's literally the center of U.Va. So I'm just really, really excited for that and I'm excited to meet all the people that will also be on the Lawn.”
60 percent of students offered rooms are female, which is a decrease compared to 68 percent last year. The top major amongst the students is Global Studies with a total of five students, followed by three American Studies majors and three Public Policy & Leadership majors.
31 offers — or 66 percent — went to students in the College, the same statistic as last year. The second most offers went to four students in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.
This year’s mean grade point average of accepted Lawn room applications was 3.734 — lower than last year’s average of 3.810.
Students who are offered a spot on the Lawn are expected to further “the ideals and traditions of the University” and build “an inclusive and vibrant community while residing on the Lawn.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that lawn rooms were offered to 37.5 percent of applicants. Lawn rooms were offered to 30.9 percent of applicants and this article has since been updated to reflect this change.
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