theonewhogrins

I actually go to stanford right now as a masters. As long as you make the deadlines and stuff, you're guaranteed housing for at least the first year. The majority of the residences as well, as long as you don't pick a sept-june contract, let you pretty much stay in the same spot as long as you're on time about deadlines. On campus housing is some of the cheapest and most convenient housing around (as long as you don't get put into overflow?) They're just opening up a new residence here, so that should mean more housing for grad students and less overflow housing. Cost-wise, I live in a 2BR apartment on campus and pay ~$950ish more like $1000 a month with activities fees and everything. Generally, housing costs around that plus or minus $100 unless you ask to be in the expensive places. Seriously, go with on campus housing. Looking for housing off campus is a headache since you're competing with all the silicon valley techies... and you're a grad student vs someone with a job. If you live on campus too, they'll put on events and stuff so at least you sometimes have the option of subsidized or free food/beer. (So much free beer.) 30K will definitely be enough to support you for a whole year if you don't have anything else to spend your stipend on. I'm actually only on a 15K stipend, and generally that's been enough to get by and still go out and do fun things occassionally... if you don't have to pay for health insurance. Seriously, that's like the most expensive thing I pay for right now. $1.3K a quarter, gone. I pay for housing and food out of my stipend, as well as books. This is assuming though, that your tuition is not coming out of your stipend... East Bay is definitely cheaper than the South bay as far as everything else goes. (Farmers Markets in the east bay as far as I know are actually cheap to go to...) Palo Alto is unfortunately expensive. Cooking at home helps a *lot*. I'm told by guys too, that on campus eating places are actually worth the money cause I think like, all you care to eat dinners are around... 9-10$? They're cheaper when you buy them in bulk. A lot of my guy friends do that haha. For food, Milk Pail is excellent if you can use your produce in a timely manner (for everything else, safeway or trader joes). Avoid the farmer's market in Palo Alto, it's kind of expensive. I try really hard not to think about how much I spend on food every month, but I would say anywhere between 400-800? I cook sometimes and I eat out sometimes. Most campus food is expensive. If you eat out it's really easy to spend $20 on dinner alone on average, unless you're actively hunting for cheap places. Check out craigslist and supost (stanford's internal craiglist for students). You can get cheap/free things on there, especially around when people are moving out or at the end of summer. Driving is expensive, but so is caltrain and zipcars. On campus parking fee actually was less than I expected. But yeah, even if you have a car, as long as your tuition isn't coming out of your 30K stipend, you should be fiiiine.