Housing decision · University of Windsor
Build a realistic first-year living plan
- 1EligibilityGuarantee and application rules
- 2OptionsBuildings, rooms, communities
- 3Full costResidence, meals, deposits
- 4CommitDeadlines and backup housing
University of Windsor Residence & Housing
Windsor, Ontario
Housing, commute, campus setting, and city fit. This focused guide keeps the detailed tables, official sources, and practical next steps in one manageable reading path.
Reviewed August 16, 2026 · Information checked against official university sources · How we review guides
Residence and Campus Fit
Windsor residence rates and the first-year guarantee
Windsor does guarantee first-year residence, and it publishes the condition in dated form: apply by June 5, 2026 for the 2026-2027 cycle and a room is guaranteed; after that it is based on availability. Four buildings, populations from 150 to 440 students, and a mandatory meal plan that costs more per year than the cheapest room.
| Residence | Who lives there | Fall 2026 and Winter 2027 room only |
|---|---|---|
| Laurier Hall — single | Beyond first-year and first-year students | $9,000 ($4,521 Fall / $4,479 Winter) |
| Cartier Hall — double | First-year students | $9,500 ($4,772 Fall / $4,728 Winter) |
| Cartier Hall — single | First-year students | $11,000 ($5,526 Fall / $5,474 Winter) |
| Alumni Hall — single | Beyond first-year students, 2-bedroom suites | $11,250 ($5,651 Fall / $5,599 Winter) |
| Rodzik Hall — single | First-year students, limited beyond first-year spaces | $11,768 ($5,912 Fall / $5,856 Winter) |
The meal plan is mandatory
Lancer's 7-Day All-Access Plan
$3,790.00 per semester
All-You-Care-To-Enjoy dining. Mandatory for residence students. Expires at the end of each term.
Lancer's 5-Day All-Access Plan
$3,635.00 per semester
The cheaper mandatory option, still billed for both the Fall and Winter terms.
Two semesters of the 7-day plan is $7,580 — more than the $9,000 annual room charge in Laurier Hall is on its own, and the two together put a Rodzik single at roughly $19,300 for the year. Add room and meal plan before you compare Windsor's housing cost against another university's.
Deposit
$475
Non-refundable, paid by credit card during the application, and credited toward the first residence fee installment.
Guarantee condition
Apply by early June
June 5, 2026 for the 2026-2027 cycle. Windsor's policy ties the date to OUAC's earliest offer-response date, so you can predict it.
Who lives in
11.7% of first-years
Windsor is a strongly local and commuter university — 98.4% of students come from Ontario.
Verify before you budget
These rates are not Board-approved yet
Windsor's own residence fees page carries the line that the residence fees listed above have not yet been approved by the Board of Governors, and that fees are subject to change — unlike its tuition figures, which are labelled approved. The Fall 2027 guarantee date is not published either. Treat early June 2027 as the working planning date, and note that the written policy is titled Domestic First Year student guarantee and refers to a separate international guarantee policy, even though the application page words it as covering all first-year students.
Fall/Winter 2026-2027
Windsor guarantees first-year residence — with a dated condition
The Fall/Winter 2026-2027 residence application page states that residence is guaranteed for all students entering their first year of university if you apply to residence by June 5, 2026, after that it is based on availability. Roommate selection ran June 1 to 8, 2026, with a roommate assigned automatically if none was chosen by June 8.
University of Windsor: Residence Application – Fall/Winter 2026-2027 · Verified August 16, 2026
Policy revised October 2024
How Windsor sets the guarantee date — and who the policy covers
Windsor's Housing and Residence Life policy states that a residence room is guaranteed for domestic undergraduate students entering their first year, who apply and submit the residence deposit by the residence guarantee date set by Housing and Residence Life, and defines that date precisely: the guarantee date is always the same date or a few days after the Ontario University Application Centre (OUAC) sets as the earliest date an Ontario high school student may be required to respond to an Ontario university offer of admission and give a financial commitment.
That definition lets you predict the Fall 2027 date from OUAC's confirmation deadline rather than waiting. Note also that the written policy is titled Domestic First Year student guarantee and refers to a separate international first-year guarantee policy, even though the 2026-2027 application page words the guarantee as covering all first-year students.
University of Windsor: Housing and Residence Life policy: domestic first-year guarantee (PDF) · Verified August 16, 2026
Fall 2027
The Fall 2027 residence guarantee date
Windsor has not published a residence guarantee deadline for Fall 2027. The only dated guarantee is June 5, 2026 for the 2026-2027 cycle. Treat early June 2027 as the working planning date and confirm once Windsor posts the Fall/Winter 2027-2028 residence application.
You must confirm your admission offer and activate your UWin Account before you can start the residence application, and Windsor asks for 24 to 48 hours between the two. Build that lag into your June planning.
University of Windsor: Residence Application – Fall/Winter 2026-2027 · Verified August 16, 2026
Fall 2026 and Winter 2027
Room rates by building
Windsor publishes room-only rates for Fall 2026 and Winter 2027: Laurier Hall single $4,521 Fall and $4,479 Winter, $9,000 for the year; Cartier Hall double $4,772 and $4,728, $9,500 for the year; Cartier Hall single $5,526 and $5,474, $11,000; Alumni Hall single $5,651 and $5,599, $11,250; and Rodzik Hall single $5,912 and $5,856, $11,768. Fall fees are due August 15, 2026 and Winter fees December 15, 2026.
The same page carries Windsor's own disclaimer that the fees listed above have not yet been approved by the Board of Governors. Budget them as firm estimates, not final numbers.
University of Windsor: Residence fees by building and room type · Verified August 16, 2026
Current buildings
Four buildings, and they are not interchangeable
Windsor operates four residence buildings with populations ranging from 150 to 440 students. Cartier Hall is home to first-year students. Rodzik Hall is home to first-year students with limited spaces available for beyond first-year students. Laurier Hall is home to beyond first-year and first-year students. Alumni Hall is home to beyond first-year students and offers 2-bedroom suites.
The application lets you state a single or double preference, but Windsor says building assignments are made by the residence team. As an incoming first-year you are realistically choosing between Cartier and Rodzik.
University of Windsor: Residence halls: buildings and who lives in them · Verified August 16, 2026
2026/2027
The meal plan is mandatory and it is the bigger number
Windsor states that if you are living in residence you are required to purchase an AYCTE meal plan. The All-You-Care-To-Enjoy plans are the Lancer's 7-Day All-Access Plan at $3,790.00 per semester and the Lancer's 5-Day All-Access Plan at $3,635.00, both billed for the Fall and Winter terms and expiring at the end of each term.
Two semesters of the 7-day plan is $7,580 — more than the entire annual room charge in Laurier Hall. Add room plus meal plan before you compare Windsor's housing cost against another university's.
University of Windsor: Food Services: residence meal plan rates · Verified August 16, 2026
Fall/Winter 2026-2027
Residence deposit
The residence application requires a $475 non-refundable deposit paid by credit card during the application, and Windsor's finance page confirms the residence deposit at $475.00 in its list of non-refundable program deposits.
University of Windsor: Residence Application – Fall/Winter 2026-2027 · Verified August 16, 2026
CUDO 2023, Fall 2022 data
Most Windsor students do not live in residence
Windsor's Common University Data Ontario return reports that 11.7% of first-year students and 5.2% of all undergraduates lived in on-campus residence, and that 98.4% of students came from Ontario, 1.3% from the rest of Canada, and 0.3% from outside Canada.
Windsor is a strongly commuter and local university. If a residential first-year experience is what you want, apply to residence the day the cycle opens and expect a smaller in-residence cohort than at a comparable Ontario university.
University of Windsor: Common University Data Ontario 2023: section E, student life · Verified August 16, 2026
Campus and city: what Windsor publishes about student life
Windsor is Canada's southernmost city, sitting at roughly the same latitude as northern California, five minutes from downtown Detroit and three and a half hours from Toronto. These cards use only uwindsor.ca statements about scale, athletics, the Toldo Lancer Centre, retention and employment outcomes, and the city itself.
Current program
Lancer athletics
Windsor fields 320 varsity athletes across basketball, cross-country, curling, football (men's only), golf, ice hockey, soccer, track and field and volleyball, plus varsity clubs in baseball and fastpitch. It publishes 26 national titles and 51 provincial titles, and states that 1 in 4 student athletes are named Academic All-Canadians each year.
University of Windsor: Athletics, clubs and extracurriculars · Verified August 16, 2026
Current facility
The Toldo Lancer Centre and who paid for it
The Toldo Lancer Centre adds 119,000 square feet of new versatile space, including an 8-lane 25-metre pool with eight diving platforms, a triple gymnasium of more than 25,000 square feet with retractable seating for 2,000, and a 13,000-square-foot fitness centre across two floors. Windsor states it was made possible by a generous $55 million contribution by UWindsor students, the largest student contribution ever for a Canadian university, and that the university runs about 1,200 intramural games annually.
That $55 million was raised through a student levy, which is why the Lancer Sports and Recreation Fee appears on the ancillary fee schedule. You are helping pay for it.
University of Windsor: Athletics, clubs and extracurriculars · Verified August 16, 2026
Current
Clubs and the students' alliance
Windsor publishes more than 200 academic and social student clubs and societies on campus. The University of Windsor Students' Alliance represents full-time undergraduate students, operates independently of the university, and provides health and dental insurance plans, safe spaces, a universal bus pass and a bike-sharing program, alongside Afro Fest, Frost Week and Welcome Week.
University of Windsor: Athletics, clubs and extracurriculars · Verified August 16, 2026
CUDO 2023
Retention, graduation, and employment
Windsor's Common University Data Ontario return reports a first-to-second-year retention rate of 83.3% for the Fall 2021 cohort, a graduation rate of 77.01% for the Fall 2015 cohort, and for 2021 graduates an overall employment rate of 89.46% six months after graduation and 94.48% two years after graduation.
CUDO 2023 is the most recent report Windsor publishes, and its class-size distribution table states that the data is not being reported at this time. Windsor publishes no average class size.
University of Windsor: Common University Data Ontario 2023: graduation, retention, and employment rates · Verified August 16, 2026
Current profile
What living in Windsor actually means
Windsor describes its home city as a 125-year-old culturally rich, community-oriented city of 217,000 residents and the 16th largest census metropolitan area in the country, with more than five million people living within an hour's drive. It is Canada's southernmost city, about three and a half hours from Toronto by the 401 and 403, with Detroit Metropolitan Airport about 30 kilometres from the border and Ann Arbor and Toledo each about 45 minutes away by car.
The campus sits on the traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg people of the Three Fires Confederacy, comprising the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa nations, and Windsor's Turtle Island – Indigenous Student Services Centre was renamed in October 2025.
University of Windsor: About Windsor: the city, the region, and the border · Verified August 16, 2026
Official Windsor residence and student-life sources
- Housing and Residence Life: domestic first-year guarantee policy (PDF)
- Residence Application – Fall/Winter 2026-2027
- Residence fees by building and room type
- Residence halls: buildings and who lives in them
- Food Services: residence meal plan rates
- Athletics, clubs and extracurriculars
- About the University of Windsor
- Why UWindsor: campus and downtown campus
- Our history: Assumption College to the University of Windsor
- Common University Data Ontario 2023: student life
- Common University Data Ontario 2023: general information
- About Windsor: the city, the region, and the border
- Future students home: program counts and student-faculty ratio
Housing and Location Questions
| Campus Setting | Regional university city with a defined campus community |
|---|---|
| Residence | Check residence guarantee rules, first-year room styles, meal plans, deposit deadlines, and off-campus housing pressure. |
| City Fit | Students should compare transit, weather, cost of living, safety, and community feel in Windsor. |
| Commuting | If living off campus, map commute time to classes, labs, placements, and evening activities before committing. |
Official Sources and Next Steps
Stellar keeps this guide structured for comparison, but official university pages remain the source of truth for program requirements, tuition, residence, scholarships, deadlines, and policy changes.
Prepared by Stellar Advisers Editorial Team · Reviewed August 16, 2026 · Editorial, corrections, and source methodology