haselnuss

I'm moving in from out of state, and I will not be able to visit to tour any apartments or anything. The area is really nice overall compared to where I live, so I'm not too concerned about safety or cleanliness, and I've already lived in some apartments with crappy landlords, dealing with maintenance, etc. You can also have bad neighbors no matter where you go. My plan is to find a nice-seeming place that is conveniently located and sign a year lease. If I don't like the apartment I can spend a lot of time on campus and move to a new apartment next summer. To find a place, I've looked at google maps and typed the name of the building where I'll have my classes, then "apartments." Carrboro area is where a lot of grad students live. Durham is good for grad students too because it's inexpensive due to a bad reputation in the past, but over the last decade or two things have gotten really nice over there. This is information I got from students and professors. You can also search on apartments.com or rent.com, but once you find a place you would want to go to the apartment's website rather than dealing with apartments.com or rent.com. I'd always rather deal with the apartment management than a third party website. One thing I've noticed that I have never seen before is that rent goes up and up and up every day/week/month closer we get to August. They know students will need to find a place ad take advantage of the desperation we have for housing and jack up the prices. It's a good idea to try to secure a place ASAP rather than wait.

I applied to University of Iowa, Florida State University, University of North Carolina, University of Michigan, University of Maine, University of Kentucky and University of Virginia. I've heard back from the first four (three acceptances, one rejection) but I haven't heard from the last three. I wound up being accepted by a program I wasn't expecting, and rejected from a program I was expecting an acceptance from (after talking with a professor and what I thought was a good fit). One of the programs I haven't heard back from (and I'm not expecting good news from) was one where a professor really liked my research interests and even planned out ways for us to work together in the fall semester. I really think that even if the fit seems good and you are competent and a competitive applicant, the school can reject you based on gut feelings or just having other applicants who are somehow an even better fit. Even if you would be a great fit, they could have found many students who would be great and had to pick the best fits out of a pool of amazing applicants. Please don't be discouraged or take it personally!

Not yet! Most of my applications were due last week or during winter break, so I don't expect to hear anything for a little while still. Doesn't make waiting any easier though.

@Yanaka I PM'd you

I'd love to read it too! I'm applying to French PhD programs so hopefully I can help Just PM me!