There’s not much that separates freshman engineering major Nii Mante’s dorm from his neighbors.

It’s got the standard-issue wood furniture and the bulletin board on the wall, but unlike most dorm residents, Mante doesn’t have to hide his microwave with a sheet or sweat in the rooms without air conditioning like most other Ellicott Hall residents.

That’s because Mante and his three roommates are enjoying a fifth-floor lounge converted into a wood-paneled, carpeted dorm room, one of four such areas in two dorms being used to address a campus-wide housing shortage.

With on-campus housing at a 20-year peak in popularity, Resident Life Department officials were left scrambling last month to make space for a flood of freshmen seeking a place to stay in between classes and on the weekends. But for 1,006 students now on a waiting list, up 71 percent since 2002 and at the highest level since 1987, the answer was to find housing somewhere else.

Officials attribute the 15 percent increase in demand over last year to rising popularity rather than admission rates, Director of Resident Life Deb Grandner said.

“People want to live on campus,” Grandner said. “They want the experience. I really believe students like living on campus and want to live on campus.”

As more students apply for on-campus housing yearly – 92 percent of all freshman now live on the campus – Resident Life officials are addressing the housing shortage by increasing the enforcement of housing application deadlines, guiding more students into off-campus apartments such as University View and converting lounges such as Mante’s.

Transfer and returning students have experienced the brunt of over-crowding effects, and are routinely denied on-campus housing as freshmen take resident life officials top priority for dorm placement, Grandner said.

But for 16 freshmen who turned in late housing applications, they have experienced remarkable consequences in their climate-controlled Ellicott and Elkton Hall lounges.

“I didn’t even know where I was going to be staying,” said Kelvin Escobar, one of Mante’s roommates. “It was a complete mystery. It wasn’t even on the map.”

Just three days before arriving at the campus, Escobar and others were informed they’d be living in “honors quads” at Ellicott. When he checked his housing status online a few days later, the room was listed as a “quad lounge.”

The 16 students have benefited from the university’s over-crowding problem by securing a decreased board expense, paying 15 percent less than what they would have been charged. Mante still remembers his reaction to the room’s unusual amenities upon arriving.

“I was like, ‘Oh damn!'” Mante said. “‘I have a fridge! I have a microwave! I have a TV!’ This is a big room. I was shocked right when I got off the elevator.”

While the 16 students enjoy their present living conditions, university officials do not prefer to resort to converting floor lounges into dorms, Grandner said.

“It’s an effort you make to be helpful,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a practice. You want to keep all the floor lounges as places students can study and socialize. It’s not desirable to always create space for students, but it does help us get through the short-term need.”

Officials have already dismantled one lounge dorm that was once located in Worcester Hall, Grandner said, and Mante and his roommates were informed they’d be moved into permanent residence by Labor Day when they began school.

They still had not heard about their housing status as of yesterday, he said.

To avoid dorm overcrowding in the future, university officials plan to continue the stricter enforcement of deadlines for residence applications and student debts, Grandner said.

Still, the real challenge for resident life officials will come within the next five years as officials will try to balance the continued high housing demand with plans to temporarily close and renovate Carroll, Caroline and Worcester Halls.

No dorms are slated to begin construction any time soon, and the Board of Regents denied a funding grant for a dorm proposed for North Campus earlier this year.

Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.