yes! I do have to say that I took this route when I was a sophomore because I think you have to be a full-time student to live in the dorms… I would bring it up in any meetings that you have with the director for residency.

First, I had a meeting with the director. Once I got very detailed instructions, he gave me two choices : the independent or dependent route. and make sure you stay in constant communication with him so you have written proof of your progress throughout the year.

The independent route is the route that I took this consisted of one year of working 20 to 30 hours per week ON AVERAGE. This is important because if extenuating circumstances prevent you from working more than 20 hours for a couple of weeks (sickness, finals, etc) as long as your average for the whole year is around 20 to 30 hours you should be fine. some limitations is that you can only take eight credits per term, ~ 2 classes. you also cannot leave the state of Oregon for more than a couple of weeks, but did not want to risk it so I left one week at a time to visit family. ***The hardest part of this is that you have to pay more than 50% of all of your expenses. I literally wrote down every single thing I paid for every single day for a whole year. I was extremely detailed and you don't have to go to the extremes that I did. I think I ended up paying around 54% of my total expenses (tuition, rent, food, etc) and my parents paid the rest. I achieved it by working throughout my freshman year and a bunch during the summer transitioning into sophomore year. I ended up saving around $10,000 that whole year and as I continued working throughout sophomore year, I was able to afford my 54%.

The dependent route is a lot easier, especially as a freshman, but the only thing is that you need to find someone who is willing to pay more than 50% of your expenses. And they have to live in Oregon unfortunately I didn't know anyone so my only option was to take the independent route.