A limited number of Dunedin school leavers will be offered places in University of Otago residential colleges next year.
About 4500 first-year students enrol annually at Otago, with about 75% from outside Dunedin.
Places in the nine university-owned residential colleges have traditionally been reserved for students from out of town, but the university council decided yesterday that policy should change.
Offering some high-calibre Dunedin students places could enable them to participate in the "Dunedin experience", vice-chancellor Prof Sir David Skegg said at the council meeting.
"At the moment we deny them that."
It has not yet been decided how many places would be offered to Dunedin students, but he said the university "was not going to go overboard".
The working party looking at how to limit enrolments believed it would be fair to keep some places for Dunedin students, he said.
It would also help to further limit first-year enrolments as the Dunedin students would have enrolled anyway.
Dunedin students and their parents already tried many ways to get into colleges and Prof Skegg said he expected demand for places to be high.
The five independently owned colleges accepted some Dunedin students already, he said.
