HE STRUGGLE to find a decent, yet affordable apartment, that has become common for many Manhattanites, hasn't affected 21-year-old Rama Penta until now. His 12th-floor suite on 5th Avenue, two blocks from Washington Square Park with a view of the Empire State Building, costs him exactly nothing. But on May 19, Penta's luck will run out. New York University will evict the college senior, who has worked as a residential housing assistant in exchange for his super-sized suite. "I think I'm a little spoiled," says Penta, of his current housing arrangement.

Sure it's nice to get an undergraduate degree from prestigious schools like NYU, but with the academic year coming to an end, a far less glamorous ritual is about to ensue: the mass hunt for housing in the city where an affordable apartment is as common as a parking spot. "It's insane," says Warren McClure, a broker with New York City Apartments, a rental apartment broker. "Let's say we get about on average of 40 calls per day. In May, we get about 100." Apartment hunting is difficult for anyone in Manhattan, with its lack of transportation, inflated broker fees and meager availability rate. But for NYU students, who are often shouldering enormous college loans and who are accustomed to high rise suites in the heart of Greenwich Village, the harsh reality of the rental market is that much harder.

This is no small issue. NYU houses 9,100 undergraduates and 2000 graduate students on its campus. Some 50 percent of graduating seniors stay in the area after finals, descending onto the Manhattan rental market looking for digs. Of this amount, very few will wind up with living arrangements that include 24-hour security, a doorman, a ringside view of Washington Square Park and rent under $1000-a-month. Rama Penta has it better than some of his peers. The soon-to-be graduate has a $50,000-a-year job lined up with Mertz Pharmaceutical, and can afford to pay between $1000 and $1200 in rent. On this salary, Penta estimates he can afford a place not that much smaller than his current setup, and still be able to afford regular payments on student loans he estimates at between $40,000 and $50,000. Still, chances are Penta won't have a room anywhere near the luxury set up he has now. Because he's a resident assistant, Penta has a double room for a single guy. He pushed the two beds together and made a king-size bed, he uses two desks for his work and still has plenty of floor space left over.