University of Chicago

[sbowman]

So, I'm having trouble finding some reliable management with a good selection of apartments in Hyde park. Any suggestions?

Small landlords tend to be your best bet for Hyde Park's ubiquitous 3-, 4- and 6- flat buildings. I'm renting from Harold Newton (Nordica LLC), and I've heard good things about a Mr. Lin, both of who own a handful of buildings. Look for ads on craigslist and Marketplace.uchi in the next few weeks that don't point to a corporate website.

[caezar86]

Small landlords tend to be your best bet for Hyde Park's ubiquitous 3-, 4- and 6- flat buildings. I'm renting from Harold Newton (Nordica LLC), and I've heard good things about a Mr. Lin, both of who own a handful of buildings. Look for ads on craigslist and Marketplace.uchi in the next few weeks that don't point to a corporate website.

Thanks! It seems like a lot of the posting on craigslist right now are big corporate/managements, and it's taking a while to sift through to the small mom n' pops.

Yeah, also, when is the best time to start seriously looking for housing for the Autumn quarter? I know a lot of places probably don't free up until later in the summer. As I'm searching now, most of the places are for summer sublets, and not for the fall.

[jessishere]

[i'm accepted to University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, but I'm torn between U of Chi and University of Michigan's School of Social Work...I grew up in Michigan and would prefer to have a new adventure (I currently live in San Francisco, where I've been the past 4.5 years. Really sad to go back to the freezing Midwest!).

I'm worried about Chicago's reputation as the place where fun comes to die...Obvs I want to get an outstanding education that will help me professionally, but I also want to meet awesome new people and have fun. I was much more excited about Chicago until I started researching (Berkeley was my first choice, and I didn't look TOO closely at the student life of other programs until Berkeley waitlisted me...elitist assfaces!) and discovered that lots of people claim U of Chi is full of ugly and socially inept nerds with no life outside of the library. I won't be able to visit both campuses for another few weeks, but I would love to hear from anyone with insight into University of Chicago's graduate student social scene, possibly compared with U of Michigan's. And especially anyone with info about the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy, which I could complete in two years along with my Master's, whereas U of M's dual degree program in Public Health and Social Work would take 3 years.

And if anyone is a rock climber with insight into the climbing community within University of Chicago and/or University of Michigan, curious minds want to know!

[soramimicake]

Well, I actually visited both University of Chicago and University of Michigan, hehe. To me, both places had students that were really happy to be there and seemed normal, not overly bookish or weird or anything. I actually asked the grad students at UChicago about the "where fun goes to die" stereotype, and most of them told me that it was a difficult school, but that that stereotype mainly referred to the undergrads. Apparently it's a really difficult undergrad institution and the undergrads can be a pain to teach....anyway, at both of the visits, students went out, had fun, and seemed to enjoy being at the school. I chose UChicago for research/school size reasons, but both seemed like good places to me!

[stefanbehr]

discovered that lots of people claim U of Chi is full of ugly and socially inept nerds with no life outside of the library. I won't be able to visit both campuses for another few weeks, but I would love to hear from anyone with insight into University of Chicago's graduate student social scene, possibly compared with U of Michigan's.

Well, I actually visited both University of Chicago and University of Michigan, hehe. To me, both places had students that were really happy to be there and seemed normal, not overly bookish or weird or anything. I actually asked the grad students at UChicago about the "where fun goes to die" stereotype, and most of them told me that it was a difficult school, but that that stereotype mainly referred to the undergrads.

I did my undergrad at UChicago, and I must agree with soramimicake that the "Where fun goes to die" problem is pretty much exclusively endemic to a portion of the undergrad population. It's actually pretty frustrating, the point to which that whole thing is really just a self-fulfilling prophecy that a part of each incoming class is unwilling to let go of (it actually seems to be getting better every year, from my remote observations). As a graduate student at UChicago, I don't think you'll have to worry so much about it. All of the grad students that I ever interacted with (doctoral candidates in linguistics) were nerdy, of course, while being extremely lively, fun, and adventurous. They were the instigators of regular gatherings involving beer, wine, food, movies (sometimes bad), plenty of social aptitude, and so on.

I'm sorry that I can't say anything about the students who are in your field in particular, but I hope that helped reinforce what sora said. Btw, I'm considering coming back to UChicago for an MS in computer science, and now that you've got me thinking about it, I have to say that I'm not worried about the social aspect of it in the same way I would be if I had to go back there to do undergrad again.

[stefanbehr]

[i'm accepted to University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, but I'm torn between U of Chi and University of Michigan's School of Social Work...I grew up in Michigan and would prefer to have a new adventure (I currently live in San Francisco, where I've been the past 4.5 years. Really sad to go back to the freezing Midwest!).

I'm worried about Chicago's reputation as the place where fun comes to die...Obvs I want to get an outstanding education that will help me professionally, but I also want to meet awesome new people and have fun. I was much more excited about Chicago until I started researching (Berkeley was my first choice, and I didn't look TOO closely at the student life of other programs until Berkeley waitlisted me...elitist assfaces!) and discovered that lots of people claim U of Chi is full of ugly and socially inept nerds with no life outside of the library. I won't be able to visit both campuses for another few weeks, but I would love to hear from anyone with insight into University of Chicago's graduate student social scene, possibly compared with U of Michigan's. And especially anyone with info about the Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy, which I could complete in two years along with my Master's, whereas U of M's dual degree program in Public Health and Social Work would take 3 years.

And if anyone is a rock climber with insight into the climbing community within University of Chicago and/or University of Michigan, curious minds want to know!

By the way, if it's worth anything: After spending four years at UChicago, and then another year or so continuing to live in Hyde Park only a few blocks from campus, I'm pretty sick of Hyde Park and of the quite small size of the campus (I currently no longer live there, but if I go back for grad school, I'll live near the Loop). Sure, you can get away from the area without too much hassle (take the 6 bus downtown via Lakeshore Drive; walking to the Green or Red Lines on 55th street is ill-advised), but otherwise there's just not much happening in Hyde Park, and the campus is too small to be able to sustain much meaningful social or recreational activity. I may be exaggerating a little bit, but I don't think it's by much. You'd probably be better off living close to downtown, but that might also be quite a hassle if you have to be on campus every day (perhaps worth it, though).

Another note: My girlfriend transferred to UChicago from UMich for her undergrad, which she's just finishing up, and she can't wait to get out of Hyde Park. She thoroughly regrets leaving her old campus behind, whose size, for one, dwarfs UChicago's.

I know this information doesn't speak at all to the academics, and I hope it doesn't totally turn you off of UChicago, because it's a great school after all, but I think it's worth considering.

Edited April 1, 2011 by stefanbehr

[stefanbehr]

Can anyone give insight as to why MAC managed property is to be avoided? Are they all bad? They do own a great deal of the apartments, if not them, where?

2.5-year MAC tenant here.

1. MAC is to be avoided for their notoriously poor management practices, including, but not limited to: leaving work orders for serious problems unanswered or unsolved for days at a time, attempting to charge tenants for every last possible thing, deliberately taking tenants on tours to nicer units which are not representative of the unit which the tenants will actually end up renting, doing a piss-poor job of renovating units and entire buildings which are certainly not up to code (either they don't renovate for ages, or they cut corners), and serving entire buildings noise complaint notices in cases where only a single unit was responsible. Some of these practices may not seem terrible when considered alone, but they're sure to infuriate when combined with the more egregious practices.

I can give a few examples to support these accusations:

a. During my second year in a MAC apartment, the ceiling in our kitchen began leaking water at an alarming rate through a light fixture (well, alarming for something leaking through a light fixture...). That the building was in such bad shape as to allow this to happen in the first place was alarming, but so was the snail's pace with which MAC responded to this problem. Because of this problem, we weren't able to cook in our kitchen for several days, for fear of having what we assumed to likely be toilet water contaminating our dishes, etc.

b. A rather renowned apartment building in Hyde Park, known as the Pepperland and historically occupied by the University of Chicago Ultimate Frisbee teams, was closed by MAC for renovations about 2 or 3 years ago. My brother had lived there before the renovations, and my girlfriend lives there now, which gives me a good before/after comparison. A mere year after the building's reopening, there are now cracks in the walls (which I might add are sloppily painted/finished/whatever with that nubbly crap that makes them look disgusting, frankly), rats infiltrating the building, doorknobs partially falling off of entranceway doors, and circuit breakers that constantly trip when one too many appliances (i.e., a toaster, seriously) is plugged in. Add to that a clothes dryer that caught fire in the basement for which the fire department had to be called out, all because MAC had refused to replace it though it was clearly showing its age.

There's more: every time there's been a need for a circuit breaker (kept under lock and key) to be flipped in order to restore power, or for eradicators to be called out for a rat problem, the response time has been appallingly slow (though the workers who come around to carry out the work orders are all awesome). Oh, and I probably shouldn't tell you this, but you can force one of the security doors open, which was the case before the renovations began, because MAC only bothered to replace the lock on the door, and not the entire rundown doorframe. Looks like I'm well into a rant here...Oops. (I really don't want MAC to have your money.)

Addendum: I think the majority of the work done on the Pepperland, by the way, went into rebuilding the balconies and staircases in the building's small inner courtyard (but not really the inside staircases), since those were in serious danger of collapse before work started on the building. And, seriously, they added designer chandeliers/lamps to the entranceways, rather than replacing door frames and busted doorknobs...

c. At one time, MAC decided they wanted to change the security door lock in my building to one that accepts a much more sophisticated (and expensive) key, and the back door locks to different cuts of key (normal type of key, though). They did this without proper notice (they protested that they had delivered notices to each unit days before the change, but all we found after some searching was a sheet of paper haphazardly thrown on the ground in the hallway sort of near our door—this is truly a common practice for their delivery of notices), which left some of us locked out for a while that day. In the end, our apartment's new back door keys were given to one of my roommates all together, since they were a less expensive kind of key, while we had to pick up the new security keys individually and sign for them. Long story short, one roommate who always came into the apartment through the back didn't bother to visit MAC for a few months to get his security key, and was later charged $100 in order to get it, since he had waited so long. Perhaps he should've gone sooner, but that's just ridiculous as a practice.

d. Last one, I promise. This one has to do with rent, and it probably got to me the most while I lived in one of their apartments, especially since it happened a handful of times. MAC habitually applied rent payments to the wrong accounts, sometimes resulting in late charges (I don't remember if those were later repealed or if we ended up having to pay them), and generally resulting in lots of time wasted trying to get their incompetent, unwilling, and apathetic staff to resolve the issue. What made it worse was that, at a certain point and for some unknown reason, they started refusing to give out receipts of any kind for payments received, leaving tenants with no avenue of recourse in the event that a check would get lost or applied to the wrong account. And forget about paying online, unless you like paying $30 fees for paying with a credit card.

2. Okay, anyway: "Are they all bad?" Not all of the apartments are bad. Some of them, and I don't think they're in the majority, have been renovated very nicely, but only because MAC totally gutted them down to their bones and rebuilt them from the inside out. I lived in one such apartment during one summer (it was on Maryland and 54th, if I recall correctly), and it was rather pleasant. That was except for the fact that nobody overseeing the renovations had had the presence of mind to order the installation of an overhead light in the bedroom that I stayed in. But there was a fluorescent closet light, so I could see my clothes just fine...

I'm sure they have a few more nice locations, but I don't think those would be representative of their holdings as a whole. It just seems like they came in to Hyde Park a few years ago, bought up a huge number of properties, and either didn't have the money left or just didn't care enough to do proper renovations.

3. There's Regents, but that's pretty expensive, as chintan said. I had a friend staying in a pretty nice 2-bedroom there for a little over $700/mo., so it's not tragic. I've seen a few ads for new remodeled apartments cropping up down near 60th or 61st Street and Ellis Ave, next to/near the newest undergraduate dorm (the area is actually looking quite nice since the dorm was finished and the road was [finally] repaved). Your best bet is probably to go to marketplace.uchicago.edu or http://www.uchicagoapartments.com/. Marketplace is how I found my sublet, which, though it was with MAC, I was generally happy with.

Sorry for all the bitterness in this post. I hope that it proves useful, and sorry I couldn't give you more names of decent management companies/landlords.

Edited April 1, 2011 by stefanbehr

[PsyK]

Hi, everyone!

I'll be attending U of C this autumn quarter as well. I'm almost certain that I'll apply for graduate housing, but the one qualm I have is not being able to see the place before accepting. They only allow for one week to decide when you receive your assignment. :-\

I'm thinking about looking at other apartments, too. It's just that, ideally, I'd like to live around other graduate students since I won't know anyone. Other perks: most, if not all, utilities included and relatively simple application process.

[caezar86]

Hi, everyone!

I'll be attending U of C this autumn quarter as well. I'm almost certain that I'll apply for graduate housing, but the one qualm I have is not being able to see the place before accepting. They only allow for one week to decide when you receive your assignment. :-\

I'm thinking about looking at other apartments, too. It's just that, ideally, I'd like to live around other graduate students since I won't know anyone. Other perks: most, if not all, utilities included and relatively simple application process.

I agree grad housing seems like a convenient option, you don't have to worry about horrible management (hopefully, I've never had problems with management in university-owned housing), and as the previous poster said, utilities, etc are included. You have to sign up ASAP to get your position in queue, and don't have to commit to anything until about a month before your estimated move-in date. The furniture is probably standard issue, won't be your own if you get 2-bedroom single student shared, but I'd be fine with that if it means close to campus and meeting other grad students.

Oh yeah, does anyone have experience with the specific graduate housing buildings, in terms of which ones are nicer to live in, better location, newer building, etc?

[PsyK]

Well, I went ahead and applied for graduate housing. I'm limited to the pet-friendly buildings since I'm bringing my kitty. There seem to be some nice ones, though, so we'll see how it turns out.

I wish we didn't have to wait so long for our first quarter to begin!

[borderlands]

I also just submitted my application for graduate housing. My first choice was a two bedroom but well see how it turns out. I'm planning to move in a month before the Autumn quarter begins.

Is anyone planning to move out Hide Park during the summer?

[PsyK]

I also just submitted my application for graduate housing. My first choice was a two bedroom but well see how it turns out. I'm planning to move in a month before the Autumn quarter begins.

Is anyone planning to move out Hide Park during the summer?

My projected move-in date is August 15th, so I'll have plenty of time to get acclimated. I'm excited!

[bogles]

Hi everyone!

I will be attending the Divinity School next fall. Does anyone have any experience with parking on campus or getting a parking permit?

[gilberto]

Hi everyone!

I will be attending the Divinity School next fall. Does anyone have any experience with parking on campus or getting a parking permit?

No parking permit necessary, though be forewarned that parking on campus is difficult. Parking on the streets north and east of campus is doable, however. By my apartment, I've never had an issue. Do you plan to rent an apartment, or do you intend to live in graduate housing?

[bogles]

No parking permit necessary, though be forewarned that parking on campus is difficult. Parking on the streets north and east of campus is doable, however. By my apartment, I've never had an issue. Do you plan to rent an apartment, or do you intend to live in graduate housing?

Thank you for your reply. I live in Edgewater and will not be relocating. As public transportation takes too long (at least to me), I will be commuting by car.