My son is planning to attend Texas A&M in the fall, assuming the financial situation works out. Where he lives on campus would depend a lot on the financial aid. Is it harder to get into nicer dorms later or cheaper dorms later? I.e., if he applies for cheaper dorms but then gets a lot of financial aid, can he switch to nicer dorms? Or would it be better to apply for nicer dorms and later switch cheaper if we need to?

Dorm selection isn't until early May

They do ask your for your dorm interest in the housing application, but it means nothing. Honestly it doesn't matter what you select on the housing application.

Submitting your dorm application gets you in line to select the dorm in May.

In general, hullabaloo will be the first dorm selected, then Modular's (north side them Southside)

Send in the housing app now because it puts him in line to choose. As mentioned, the selection doesn't take place until May, and it will go in order of when the housing application was received.

We did this last year with my son and I agree with above poster that whatever you put now in the application or early phases doesn't matter. The key thing is getting your housing deposit down as soon as possible after acceptance to make sure you have the most options when dorm selection does open in May. My son did pretty much everything as soon as possible and still ended up in either the second timeslot on the first day of dorm selection or maybe the second day...I forget.

I also agree, in general, that Hullabaloo goes first and then modular dorms but there are a few wrinkles to that.

My son and his roommate were looking to save some money and had actually planned to get a room in a balcony dorm. We were all surprised to find that no doubles (e.g. both spots in a room) were available in any balcony dorm. Some floors/dorms were completely reserved for a first-generation LLC and the rooms that showed availability only had one spot (e.g. an upperclassmen had already reserved one spot). My son ended up in a modular but had to pick a room on the 'short' side of the building because available rooms with two spots were dwindling.