With classes winding down, comps submitted, graduation robes fitted and post-grad plans at least somewhat committed, the class of 2026 has one final challenge to overcome before they’re launched into the world, degrees in hand: finding a place to call home.

Although the Princeton Review estimates a median starting salary of $66,700 for Allegheny graduates who have earned at least a bachelor’s degree, many seniors graduating next month may find that the skyrocketing cost of rent has pushed independent apartment living out of reach. According to The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ most recent State of the Nation’s Housing report, released last summer, more than 45% of renter households earning $45,000 to $74,999 a year were considered “cost-burdened,” meaning that housing costs ate up more than one third of their annual income. For renter households making less than $45,000, that share rises past 70%. This outsized expenditure leaves people with few financial resources they can allocate towards other needs like healthcare, transportation, retirement savings, food, emergencies and paying off student loan debt.

Renee Tetlow, ’26, a math and economics double-major who will move to State College to attend a Penn State Ph.D. program in statistics, said she had initially been hoping to find a studio or one-bedroom apartment that she could afford on the student stipend offered by her program. However, after a weekend of touring apartments, Tetlow told The Campus she had to raise her initial rent estimate upwards from about $1,300 to $1,600.

“I’m finding places that I like that are a couple hundred above what I would like to be paying, but I think it’s an ‘I can make it work’ kind of situation,” Tetlow said.

She described a competitive housing market where Penn State students often sign leases up to a year in advance of their move-in date — a timeline she had not been able to participate in due to only finalizing her graduate school decision last month after hearing back from each program she applied to.

“It wasn’t until maybe end of March that I had figured out where I was actually going by waiting for all the schools to be done,” Tetlow said. “So I think because of comping, it took me a little later to start the search. But I think the past two weeks, I’ve been doing casual Zillow, Apartments.com, scoping it out. And then I was trying to find when to actually go apartment hunting, because I wanted to go with my parents since I’ve never done this before.

“The leasing agents have been saying that people start looking at apartments as early as September,” Tetlow continued. “So, there’s options out there. But the options by now are either more expensive or not super great.”

Tetlow said that after surveying the rental market in State College, her family decided to help offset the additional cost that fell outside the price Tetlow had originally hoped to pay.

“I think as we were looking for apartments, I was very freaked out about the prices, and my dad was like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. We’ll get you a place, we’ll help you with anything that’s above your budget,’ essentially,” Tetlow said.

Lexi Adams, ’26, a double-major in political science and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, found housing through her job as the Pennsylvania Democrats’ regional organizing director for District 14.

Adams said that housing was a key factor in her decision between two competing job offers for the Democratic Party in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“I’m originally from the district that I would have accepted in Ohio — I could live at home, and so that was a big contributing factor to how I picked a role, because if I could save money on rent, pay off student loans, I’m currently buying my first car, so, all of these different payments are coming down the pipeline,” Adams said. “If I could save money on rent, that was something I was considering, especially given that campaign jobs are six-month intervals, and so I was highly considering Ohio, and then I reached out to an Allegheny alum that worked under my future boss for Pa. Dems, and they said that in campaign world, they have something called supporter housing, and depending on what state you’re in, it’s more robust than others.”

Adams asked her contacts at the job in Pennsylvania if supporter housing might be an option she could use to bring down the cost of housing.

“Basically, it’s this network where if you’re working on the campaign, they have supporters that will offer up their rooms and their homes,” Adams said. “I have my own room, my own bathroom, and it’s this retired couple that’s adopting me for the election cycle. But what that means is, I don’t have to pay rent. It’s kind of like their contribution to the campaign efforts. And so that being said, I ended up picking Pa. over Ohio because the rent became out of the question and Pa. was paying more and the connections were better and Pa. being more of a swing state than Ohio.”

Athena Drollas, ’26, an environmental science and sustainability major with double minors in Spanish and energy and society, said she had been applying to jobs across the country, but when she received an offer from Langan, an environmental consulting company she interned with last summer, she decided to take advantage of the easy commute to Langan’s office from her parents’ home in north Jersey.

“I know a lot of people are paying $2,000 a month in rent and I definitely cannot afford that right now,” Drollas said. “So, yeah, I’m lucky enough to be able to live at home, that my office is close enough to home that I can just commute.”

Now, she plans to live there at least until she is debt-free.

“I would like to move out by the time that my debt is gone,” Drollas said, “but it’s very pricey to live in north Jersey, New York City, that whole area.”

“It’s kind of my last resort, to be honest,” Drollas continued. “I do love my family. I love my parents, but my mom and I have talked about it before. She’s like, ‘When I graduated, I didn’t want to live at home, either. I get why you want to move out.’ So, I definitely, I love my parents and I appreciate them, but I am also at an age where I’m ready to be on my own, have my own place. Especially living here for four years, I’m like, ‘I know how to be by myself on my own. I can do it.’”

While Drollas said that her parents are happy to have her and her older sister living at home, Drollas hopes that she might begin searching for a place to call their own this fall.

“I mean, if everything works out, I would want to be out by, like, October,” Drollas said. “But I would rather be debt-free.”

She emphasized several cost-saving strategies that she hopes might make a move possible, including sharing a space with her sister and looking for leases with fewer amenities.

“Honestly, the perfect timeline would be, we both get rid of our debt, or she gets rid of a majority of hers, and we find a place that’s in between her office and my office and we just move out and get to be roommates together,” Drollas said.

“I don’t want to live lavishly,” she continued. “I’m okay getting a little dingy apartment for a while with my sister.”

Drollas reflected on the challenges that a tough job market poses, particularly for students who are not able to move home or rely on a strong familial support network while they work out the logistics of their after-graduation lives.

“I feel like my situation is different than a lot of other people’s situations,” Drollas said. “I do get to live at home and I do have a stable job right now where, for many college students, they don’t have the ability to live at home and they don’t have the stability of a job right now because the job market is terrible as well.”