Living in student housing as a grad student

[Bayesian1701]

I am struggling to find a safe 1 bedroom close to campus ( no more than a 15-minute commute) that I can afford in the city I am moving to for grad schools(I don’t want to say where exactly).   Almost all of my options are student-oriented housing (either on campus or off).  I have literally spent over 50 hours looking for places plus driving around during a visit.  I am graduating early so I will be undergraduate aged when I start graduate school which makes me less hesitant to live in student housing.  I will obviously attempt to avoid places that have parties a lot (by reading reviews and looking for crime data on alcohol-related offenses).   This market there is very student oriented which with three different kinds of apartments: student, low income, and super luxurious professional apartments that I can’t really afford.  The cheaper places don’t have a lot of students but I am a single woman and a lot of those places I have looked at have crime issues.  I live in a college town now, and I know that a lot of graduate students here live at some of the student places because they are cheap, safe, and close to campus.  Is it a horrible idea to live in a complex alone that caters to undergraduate students if I live in one of the quieter ones alone in a building of one bedroom apartments?   I could do a house but I don't know anybody in the town and I think finding random roommates is a bad idea and it's not likely I can find someone in the department to live with my first year.  

Edited March 26, 2018 by Bayesian1701

[TakeruK]

I voted yes, but then I realised I might have misunderstood what you were asking. In any case, there are lots of things that can be described as "student apartment complex". So here are some thoughts, separated into two main categories of housing (i.e. university owned/run vs. open market).

University-owned and University run apartments. I would definitely consider living in University-owned student housing if there were a complex/building/community for graduate (and professional) students only. Sometimes they include undergrads with families in this category, which is fine with me too. I would personally prefer an unfurnished university-owned grad housing option (i.e. it's like any other lease except the school is the owner), and my partner and I did live in one of these arrangements for 2.5 years because it was heavily subsidized (half of the market rate).

I would also consider University-owned furnished housing set aside for graduate students. At my school, these are primarily 4-bedroom apartments that with individual locks for each bedroom, 2 shared bathrooms and a shared living/kitchen space. With a partner, this isn't really a feasible option for us (although there are single bedroom apartments that cost more for people in our situation), but in general, it's potentially a good idea. It could also be a good idea for at least the first year so that you don't have to worry about moving and finding a new place (i.e. gives you a home base to start looking for new apartments).

However, I would not live in University-owned housing that is undergraduate focussed. At most places, these are very tight/cramped areas and it would make me feel more like a student instead of a professional-in-training. Also, they often only offer housing for fall and spring, sometimes not during breaks or summers, and that would be a pain. That said, if housing is really expensive or hard-to-find, a temporary stay in this housing situation might be good as a home base to look for other options. 

For all university housing options, they usually have pretty low fees for breaking your lease early, so it might also be reasonable to start searching for housing shortly after you get settled and moving out / breaking your lease as soon as you find something better (for example, getting to know other people who are willing to share a house with you or maybe you make some friends with an opening in their house!)

Open-market apartments. I wouldn't really worry about other undergraduates living in the same building unless for some reason the entire building is all undergrads and/or the condition of the building is very terrible due to the fact that only students live there. This was what I had thought you originally meant, which was why I had chose "yes" (although for most options above, I would have said "yes" too!). Similarly, if you can find a lease that allows you to go to a month-to-month status after some period of time, this will allow you to make better arrangements for yourself in future years.

 

[Bleep_Bloop]

4 hours ago, Bayesian1701 said:

Is it a horrible idea to live in a complex alone that caters to undergraduate students if I live in one of the quieter ones alone in a building of one bedroom apartments? 

If I were in a one-bedroom, I wouldn't really care who lived in the building so long as it had a reputation for being quiet. I would not share an apartment with an undergrad if I could help it just because our lifestyles would be so different and we would have little in common. Though I would take a university owned and operated apartment with an undergrad over rooming with a rando from craigslist, hands down. 

[juilletmercredi]

I'm not sure exactly what city you are looking in, but in many cities the university is in a nice neighborhood where finding an affordable one-bedroom apartment to live in alone with a 15-minute commute radius is nigh impossible on a grad student budget. I went to grad school in New York and looking for that kind of set-up would be unrealistic; I'd imagine a lot of other large expensive cities (LA, Boston, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) would have similar barriers. Is it possible that what you're looking for doesn't exist?

Would you consider...

1) Extending your commute? 15 minutes is rather short. What about 30 minutes? If you're traveling on public transit, in many cities it's common for those commutes to be longer. You can read or listen to podcasts or music on the bus.

2) Living with roommates? It's very common for grad students to live with roommates, especially in big expensive cities. Even one roommate can significantly reduce the cost of rent. More-or-less random roommates aren't necessarily bad; I've lived with lots of different randomly-placed/found roommates between the ages of 18 and 28, and I've never had a horrible experience and I've had some really positive ones! You can actually find someone in your department - the roommates I had in grad school were all other grad students who went to my university, and my first roommate was in my department. Some schools release a directory of students who are all looking for housing so you can pair up and look together (that's how I found my first one). Believe it or not, I found a couple of my roommates on Craigslist, and it worked out fine. You just have to be sure to meet them beforehand.

I've lived in all of these kinds of setups. For two years I was a graduate hall director and I lived in all-upperclass, undergraduate buildings, where I was the only grad student. I've lived in university-owned apartments for graduate and non-traditional students, and I've also lived in regular open-market apartments not owned by the university. It honestly doesn't matter - these options are going to vary widely in the kinds of amenities and atmospheres they offer.

Undergraduates do, on average, tend to throw more parties. But I have also lived in some open-market apartments that were pretty loud; in fact, the loudest place I ever lived was an open-market apartment in a neighborhood in which the teenagers and young adults had frequent summer jams on the stoop outside my window, sometimes until 5 am Some undergrads in my building when I was a hall director threw a party every (other?) Thursday, but they typically wrapped it up before 12-1 am, and I could only really hear them when they opened the door of their dorm room. Graduate students, in general, tend to be very quiet...the grad student apartments I lived in were the quietest place I lived, I think.

Also, I gotta ask: What is your threshold/definition of crime issues? Everybody has to have their own personal threshold of safety, but I've found that a lot of neighborhoods people perceive as unsafe or crime-ridden actually...aren't. I lived in a neighborhood that a lot of people might feel uncomfortable with, at first blush, because of who lived there. But I felt super comfortable because I knew a lot of people on my block and there were always people outside - even at 5 am (the aforementioned teenagers!) - and I'd see them and talk to them when I was on my way back from a late night/early morning.

Crime data on alcohol-related offenses is not really going to tell you what areas have a lot of parties - for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that universities often shield students who get into alcohol trouble from ever interacting with the actual police much less being charged with a crime (and also because a lot of these get called in as noise complaints, not alcohol-related offenses anyway).

Edited March 26, 2018 by juilletmercredi

[rising_star]

33 minutes ago, Bleep_Bloop said:

If I were in a one-bedroom, I wouldn't really care who lived in the building so long as it had a reputation for being quiet. I would not share an apartment with an undergrad if I could help it just because our lifestyles would be so different and we would have little in common. Though I would take a university owned and operated apartment with an undergrad over rooming with a rando from craigslist, hands down. 

Actually, you never know. I lived with an undergrad senior the first year of my MA and our lifestyles were actually quite similar. They were doing student teaching so they essentially had a FT job and our needs were really quite compatible. That said, we did not live in a student apartment complex, but rather housing that was mostly young professionals.

I'm the opposite of @juilletmercredi in that I didn't live in any big cities during grad school and was able to have a 20 minute or less commute by bike/bus in those cities. I valued the short commute. I was able to find neighborhoods which were plenty safe (I actually never looked at the crime stats but determined how safe I'd feel by walking/biking/driving around the area during the day and at night) and affordable. In grad school, I typically lived in small places owned by a private landlord. That did mean driving around to see "for rent" signs, rather than relying solely on the big internet sites, but it was worth it because it ultimately saved me money on rent. A lot of it is really going to depend on where you are and, since you haven't told us, that makes it more difficult for us to offer your advice. You may want to check out the "City Guide" to see if there are relevant posts for the place you're interested in. You may also want to talk to current grad students to get their sense of safe locations, what you should expect to pay, etc. 

[Bleep_Bloop]

13 hours ago, juilletmercredi said:

Also, I gotta ask: What is your threshold/definition of crime issues? Everybody has to have their own personal threshold of safety, but I've found that a lot of neighborhoods people perceive as unsafe or crime-ridden actually...aren't. I lived in a neighborhood that a lot of people might feel uncomfortable with, at first blush, because of who lived there. But I felt super comfortable because I knew a lot of people on my block and there were always people outside - even at 5 am (the aforementioned teenagers!) - and I'd see them and talk to them when I was on my way back from a late night/early morning.

Crime data on alcohol-related offenses is not really going to tell you what areas have a lot of parties - for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that universities often shield students who get into alcohol trouble from ever interacting with the actual police much less being charged with a crime (and also because a lot of these get called in as noise complaints, not alcohol-related offenses anyway).

I want to second both of these points, as they've been true in my experience as well. At every institution I've attended there's been an unofficial rule that the town police would not enter campus unless called for by the campus security. So all drug and alcohol violations went through the university and the students were safe from any legal consequences, except in the most serious cases involving, say, drug dealing. It's pretty typical. 

[Bayesian1701]

I guess I am trying to avoid anywhere than had more than a few violent crimes (murder, rape, assault) or break-ins. I know the the alcohol crime is going to be underreported but if it is showing up anyway on the crime maps that's probably not a good sign.  Finding safe places isn't really as much of a problem as finding quiet and affordable.  My parents think I should avoid living with students at all costs,  but they haven't been in college for 30 years and think living by sorority row is a great idea.  I have ideas of student complexes that will be quiet but I wasn't sure if that was a bad idea.  There are a some student complexes that are unfurnished,  don't have fancy amenities, are in a residential neighborhood, and don't have anything bigger than a 2 bedroom which I think would probably be more chill places than a giant high rises with 4 bedroom apartments in the middle of the entertainment district.  I was curious if the don't live with undergrads advice extended to location or was just for roommates. 

[Bayesian1701]

Update:  A condo on the market had its rent reduced and I ended up leasing it.  It was in my budget, safe, and 1.5 miles to campus with a bus lane.  It's next to an undergraduate heavy complex but I decided that is not a big deal.  I would have done with student apartments if the condo didn't appear.  For clarification, I would never live in traditional dorms as a grad student (I didn't even live in one for undergrad).

[TakeruK]

Glad you found a place to live! Finding a lease is always one of the biggest stresses of moving (for me) and for all of my moves, signing that lease is just a huge weight lifted. Congrats