This paper presents an empirical study about the relationship between sleep and the living conditions of students of a Brazilian public university located in the peripheral zone of the city of São Paulo, within the framework of a policy of democratization of access to higher education. Based on the cooperation between researchers in the fields of neurosciences, sociology and psychology and their students, this research is configured within the scope of the theme of number 1, as an interdisciplinary experience on the objective conditions of the well-being of university students. Sleep is biological phenomenon essential to life. Decreased sleep duration, as a consequence of living conditions in large urban centers, such as home distance from the study site, light pollution, extremely early hours for social commitments and late sleeping times, is associated with problems of cognitive function, psychiatric diseases and general well being. These conditions associated to sleep deprivation represent especial threaten to the student population, which has a high cognitive and motivational demand in universities. We conducted a survey by social demographic and the Munich Chronotype questionnaires (MCTQ) to access social conditions sleep variables , with university students (n = 704). The results were treated using a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). The first axis opposes students who sleep more than 8 hours a night to those who sleep less than 5 hours. The second axis distinguishes the respondents according to their chronotype (morning, intermediate, evening types). We included the study socio-demographic variables of gender, age, social origin, work, time spent to commute, time of the day of the classes and indicators of school investment. The results allow us to identify how the living conditions of the students contribute to the identified sleep patterns, indicate the importance of classes hours and the interaction between the environmental factors related to the living conditions and the temporal and homeostatic individual adjustments of the body to these conditions.