Married and graduate students face a critical fall shortage of housing, with 300 applications for living quarters from married couples and an acute demand for furnished rooms from single students reported still unfilled yesterday.

During the past ten days alone, more than 200 applications for fall housing have been filed by married students, Donald K. Hathaway of Hunneman and Company disclosed. Mrs. W. A. Lowry of the Room Registry office in Phillips Brooks House added that as many as 60 persons a day have been inquiring about furnished rooms.

Relief Distant

Not until February, predicted Hathaway, is there the possibility of real relief in the present housing shortage. Then there may be a substantial number of vacancies because of this year's return to the two term university schedule.

For the first time, Harvardevans, which operated heretofore with approximately 50 vacancies, is completely filled. In the past students have been reluctant to stay at Devens, but a reduction in fall rates a gradual rent rise elsewhere, and the acute shortage of housing have all combined to fill the project.

No more married students from the University of Massachusetts are being admitted to Harvardevens, Hathaway stated. The 80 couples who were admitted when Harvardevens was partly vacant, will remain, however.

Comparing the number of applications this year with last fall, Hathaway said that then there were 1200 unfilled applications in September and by December the demand had dropped to 200.

Single students in the graduate schools. Mrs. Lowry affirmed, are also hard hit by the housing shortage. At present there are only 150 furnished rooms to satisfy 1500 expected applications. Only 500 students will be settled in Cambridge, she noted, with the rest scattered around Boston.

Increasing the current shortage of rooms will be the use this fall of Apley. Little and Dudley Halls to house undergraduates instead of the usual 178 graduates.