earthbound

Also, House renting is a very common option for grad students, some undergrads, and young professionals outside of school. If any of you are interested in that sort of thing, I have a little bit of experience, having lived in one with a group of undergrads and having some secondhand knowledge of the house hunting experience. It boils down to this: renting a room in a house is a great option, often cheaper than apartments (tend to be 400 or 550 a room instead of 600 or 700) and with more privacy, a yard, typically quieter, generally have more amenities, etc. If you can find three or more people you can stand living with, go for it. Hell, since houses are more spread out than apartments, you often can avoid housemates with ease, if you don't get along with them. HOWEVER, house hunting is a huge hassle. You have to find a place that's available and in your price range (and they go quick), enough people to commit to filling it with you so you don't end up paying for three empty rooms, and I've had friends get turned down for house applications, even with good recommendations and financially endowed co-signers, with no reasoning attached. I've heard a lot of renters take their sweet time with getting back to you on your applications as well, so you end up spending weeks up in the air about whether or not you have a place to live. My friends started months early, with experience hunting for houses to rent, applied to lots of places, and ended up homeless for a few weeks since the only place that accepted them had a lease that started a month later than their move-out deadline. So in terms of houses, my advice is to rent from people who already have a house and are looking to fill that last room rather than trying to set one up yourself. It's common in a lot of places to have houses belonging almost exclusively to grad students, and even grad students in the same program, so they'll be pretty sympathetic to long work days and party-free nights. Unfortunately, I don't know of any in particular at the UW, but that's the sort of thing the current students in your program would know about.

From what I've seen, most rooms/shares in the area range from $450-$750, with most being around $550 or $600, including utilities and without pets. The area directly around the UW is called the UDistrict, and it's going to be a little expensive because of the tens of thousands of undergraduates vying for housing (not an exaggeration, the UW is huge). If you do find something at a low price in the UDistrict, it's going to be a terrible rat-infested cellblock in the basement, pretty much guaranteed. The nearest residential neighborhood is called Wallingford, which is going to be cheaper and much nicer, and it's the neighborhood most grad students try to live in. It'd be possible to find a 1Bd apartment there for $1100, but I wouldn't bank on it... You're best bet is to look for a 2+ bedroom apartment - most 2 bedrooms end up going for about 600 or more a room, and most 3 bedroom apartments go for 400 or 500 a room, and those are pretty typical prices for all over Seattle. Right near Wallingford is Fremont, which is a little more upscale with a bunch of quirky shops and restarants, plus a chocolate factory (!). The rent is a little higher there, you're probably better off living NEAR Fremont than in Fremont. The further north you go on the West side of Greenlake (Ballard, Phinney Ridge, Aurora), the cheaper it gets, but you have to make sure you either have a car or are near a bus stop because it quickly becomes a pretty long walk to campus. However there's a lot going on in those neighborhoods and they all seem pretty cool to live in. On the east side of Greenlake there's Ravenna, which can be cheap but I don't know anything about it, and typically I think the neighborhoods get "nicer" the further north you go, and it gets pricier. Northgate I mostly know because of the big mall up there, but it seems kind of... way far North. But compared to amoryb's commute from Olympia, it's probably not TOO bad. Either way I have no idea about the quality of living or prices up there. Also to the South there's Capitol Hill, where I live now. The prices are about the same as Wallingford but it's a little further from campus. There's a lot of unique neighborhoods in Seattle, and capitol hill is definitely the most, uh, loud and proud, if you know what I mean? Capitol Hill dwellers are definitely a unique brand of freaks and geeks. You can find cheaper and cheaper housing the further south you go, but I wouldn't recommend it. Particularly, if you're looking up housing on craiglist and the neighborhood is Yesler Terrace or the International District, you probably wanna look elsewhere. They tend to be poorer neighborhoods with higher crime rates, and all the other unfortunate realities of inner city life. But the ID has killer pho, if you're into that. Central Seattle, Queen Anne, and Downtown are all really expensive and way out of your way, don't bother looking there.

I'm currently in the Seattle area for my undergrad, and planning on attending the UW for a PhD in Physical Oceanography. But I'll be looking to move a little closer to the U District for the Fall, and I'll be looking for a few people to split rent with. Depending on where you look, rent for a two bedroom apartment can run from $1200/mo to $2000/mo, though you probably won't end up in a place that expensive unless you were really hunting for expensive housing. I'm currently splitting a 2Bd/2Ba on Capital hill with my sister and my boyfriend, and the whole thing is $1350/mo. Craigslist of course can give you a good idea of prices, and I'm personally pretty fond of Padmapper.com, since it gives you a good idea of where places are as well as letting you know whether the place you're looking at has above average or below average rent for the size. The problem I'm running into right now is that I want to be sure I'll have a place by September but I'm not totally sure how to find pre-leases, and I'm a little nervous about hunting for roommates. I know how important it is to find roommates you can get along with, and I'm pretty reclusive as it is. But I've heard a lot of sob stories of graduate students who spent all day working alone on their projects and went home to empty apartments, leading to lots of loneliness and depression. Hell, that was me my first two years of undergrad! I don't want to do that again.