The primacy of meeting public university students' essential needs in the wake of COVID-19: An overdue higher education priority.

Objectives: We investigated the holistic experiences of university students during the pandemic.

Participants: Thirty-eight students in a public university system in New York City (NYC) purposively selected from neighborhoods highly affected by the pandemic based on level of self-reported impact.

Methods: We conducted virtual in-depth interviews from May to August 2021 and analyzed data using thematic coding and constant comparison techniques informed by grounded theory.