Marie Collins was looking forward to spending her sophomore year living the "Berkeley experience" at one of the local co-ops. But Collins, like hundreds of students, is on one of the longest waitlists the Berkeley Student Cooperative has seen in recent years.

Founded nearly 75 years ago with the mission of providing college students with affordable housing, the Berkeley Student Cooperative received 1,877 applications during the 2007-08 school year, up from 1,557 applications during the previous school year. The organization receives applications on a rolling basis.

About 400 people are currently on the waitlist to enter the co-ops, said Jan Stokley, executive director for the Berkeley Student Cooperative. She said the list is longer than it has been at this time in recent years, although the housing staff does not have data from previous years.

Collins said that when she applied in April for Sherman Hall, her first choice co-op, she was in the 300s on the waitlist. Four months later, she remains on the waitlist at number 180.

"I was disappointed because my friends were in it and I wanted to live with them, but there will be other chances," said Collins, who has since moved into an apartment.

As UC Berkeley welcomes its largest incoming freshmen class in history, students are finding it more difficult to find an affordable place to live.

While increasing the availibility of housing is the logical next step for co-op officials, finding affordable property to convert into new co-ops without raising rates is an extremely difficult task, Stokley said.

"The multi-family, larger properties that would be suitable for co-ops, the prices don't seem to be affected much at Berkeley as far as we can tell," she said.

After sophomores Priscilla Frank and Hallie Kutak applied in February to Cloyne Court, Frank said that co-op employees repeatedly told the friends they would soon be accepted.

"When we called to check to see if it's OK, they kept saying, 'You'll be in the next round, you'll be in the next round,'" Frank said.

But by July, she and her friend decided to give up because they were still on the waitlist. Without a backup plan, they began searching for an apartment.

"We spent two hours looking at Craigslist each night," Frank said. "That week was pretty horrible and most people had found housing at that point, and we were scared we had to find housing really far from campus."

To help waitlisted students find housing, the Berkeley Student Cooperative refers students to vacant spots in the residence halls, Stokley said.

She added that students on the waitlist who still want to live in the co-ops should continue to speak with housing officials.

But Frank said that if she had been told earlier that her chances of living in a co-op were slim, she would not have had to scramble for a place to live.

"I understand there (are) too many people to get in," she said. "I wish the people I communicated with would be clearer that we wouldn't get in."

Tags: CO-OP, USCA, WAITLIST