Florida Atlantic University – Profile, Academic, Cost & Ranking

Florida Atlantic University’s Parliament Hall on the Boca Raton campus

Residential housing at FAU is available on the Boca Raton and John D. MacArthur campuses. “All full-time freshmen are required to reside in university housing,” however, “exemptions from this policy are made for students who: are 21 or older by the first day of class, reside with parent(s) or legal guardian(s) within a 50-mile (80 km) radius of the Boca Raton campus, or are married.”

As of 2021, over 4,000 students live on-campus in Boca Raton. The Wilkes Honors College on the MacArthur Campus requires all students live on-campus within its three residence halls, however, exceptions are made for students who are 26 years of age, married, or have dependent children.

Boca Raton’s on-campus housing facilities are: Indian River Towers (opened 2001), Heritage Park Towers (opened 2004), Glades Park Towers (opened 2007), Parliament Hall (opened 2013), University Village Apartments (UVA), and Innovation Village Apartments (IVA) (opened 2011). Heritage Park and Glades Park Towers each offer 602 beds with 96 single rooms. UVA and IVA exclusively serve upperclassmen while the other residence halls exclusively serve freshmen students. The university also offers upper-division undergraduate and graduate student housing in the Business and Professional Women’s Scholarship House for women with a strong academic background.

One of the newest residences on the Boca Raton campus is the Innovation Village Apartments (IVA), consisting of two buildings: IVA North and IVA South. It is a 1,200-bed apartment-style housing facility for upperclassmen, graduate, and medical students.

It offers amenities that one would find in a high-rise apartment complex: lounges, retail dining, fitness centers, a pool/cabana, a volleyball court, common areas, and more. The facility opened in fall 2011. FAU’s newest residence hall is Parliament Hall, a lakeside freshmen housing facility offering 614 beds, a fitness center, lounges, retail dining, and views of the nearby Atlantic Ocean from top floors.

Within its existing residential life programs, FAU offers a number of Learning Communities for freshmen and students with similar interests and concentrations. Participants meet people with similar interests, live on the same floor and take courses with others in their community, while receiving additional guidance related to those interests.^[99] The university’s Learning Community programs are divided into two categories, Freshman Learning Communities and Living Learning Communities.

The freshman program offers 16 different concentrations, including business, nursing, and education. The Living program offers six concentrations for students residing in the Glades Park Towers dormitory, including engineering, computer science, and a Women’s Leadership program.

The university’s Department of Housing and Residential Life and the university’s fraternities and sororities sponsor a program for freshmen and other students returning to Florida Atlantic in the fall semester. This program, called the “Weeks of Welcome”, spans 11 days and all campuses, and works to acclimate students with university life and to build a good on-campus community. On each day, a number of different events are scheduled, including Hall Wars, which are athletic competitions between dormitories, Luaus, and a number of other events. The Weeks of Welcome is the second largest campus-wide event held by Florida Atlantic.