The Lawn Selection Committee provided 47 students offers to live on the Lawn for the 2024-25 academic year, receiving a total of 177 applications. The Committee received 25 more applications than it did last year — dropping the acceptance rate from 30.9 percent to 26.6 percent.
While there are 54 Lawn rooms in total, the additional seven Lawn rooms are reserved either for specific clubs and organizations — such as the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society and Kappa Sigma fraternity — or for students with specific accolades who are selected independently from the Committee. Because residents of these rooms are chosen by separate organizations rather than the Lawn Selection Committee, they are not included in reported statistics about the students who received offers to live on the Lawn.
According to University Student Affairs, the Lawn Selection Committee chooses students to live on the Lawn based on their contributions to the University and Charlottesville-area communities, as well as their academic and extracurricular accomplishments. During their time on the Lawn, students are expected to embody University ideals of service and involvement and continue to foster a sense of community.
The Lawn Selection Committee is entirely student-run and comprises approximately 60 fourth-year students, half representing the University’s undergraduate schools and select student organizations and half being randomly selected from the fourth-year class. Fourth-year College student Cyrena Matingou, who serves as Lawn senior resident and a non-voting member of the Lawn Selection Committee, said the Committee looks for students whose leadership has had a major impact on Grounds, regardless of whether they hold a formal leadership position.
“We still recognize the importance of [leading an organization],” Matingou said. “But [we also want] to highlight experiences that don’t have the same title associated with [them], but [are] still having really strong impacts within their communities.”
Third-year College student Nick Witkowski was selected to live on the Lawn for the 2024-25 academic year. He said that he first became interested in living on the Lawn during his second year at the University, and that he looks forward to meeting other Lawn residents and having people visit his room.
“I’ve always felt a great sense of community on the Lawn, even just sitting there with friends having a picnic,” Witkowski said. “I knew I wanted to participate in making that space what it was — a community of really cool people.”
James Edwards, Third-year Council president and third-year Nursing student, also said he was excited for the opportunity to meet new people, whether students or otherwise.
“I’m excited to interact with all the visitors to the Lawn, whether that be tourists, students [or] whoever happens to stumble into your room,” Edwards said. “I’m really looking forward to being able to represent the University to them.”
Despite an increase in applications from last year, the number of applicants has not returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. While the Lawn Selection Committee received 221 applications in 2020, the highest number of applications received since the beginning of the pandemic was 189 for the 2021-22 academic year.
The Committee offered 70 percent of Lawn rooms to women, a 10 percent increase from the previous year. The mean grade point average was 3.754, a 2 percent increase from 3.734 the previous year. Unlike in previous years, the University did not provide data on the race and ethnicity of students accepted to live on the Lawn for the 2024-25 academic year.
Students in the College of Arts and Sciences make up 60 percent of the accepted applicants, a six percent decrease from the year prior. The School of Engineering and Applied Science and School of Education and Human Development tied for the second most offers, with each comprising 9 percent of accepted applicants. The most common major among those offered Lawn rooms was Global Studies, making up 11 percent of accepted applicants. Computer Science was the second most common at 9 percent.
All application decisions were released by Feb. 16, and accepted students have until 5 p.m. Feb. 23 to accept or decline their offer.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that last year’s acceptance rate for lawn rooms was 37.5 percent. The acceptance rate for lawn rooms last year was 30.9 percent and this article has since been updated to reflect this change.
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