La Jolla, CA

[ChanEvansLam]

I am 80% sure I will be attending Scripps in the fall for a chemistry PhD. I have begun looking at appartments and was wondering:

 

[A] where do most graduate students live?

 

where I can find a nice one bedroom for no more than $1250/mo

 

[C] what the commute from that place would be like?

 

much appreciated

Edited March 8, 2015 by ChanEvansLam

[MathCat]

There's some discussion about La Jolla in the San Diego thread.

[Xeno]

[A] where do most graduate students live?---depends how much you have to spend..

 

where I can find a nice one bedroom for no more than $1250/mo---- in that area?  Not feasible, although you might be able to live in the ghetto "university heights" area sharing a bedroom with someone... and no, the area IS ghetto there are bars on the windows...

 

[C] what the commute from that place would be like?--- not too bad. 

 

SD/La Jolla, Oceanside is crazy expensive....you might try escondido but then you woud probably have a bit of a commute..

[isilya]

[A] most of the grad students I know live in the Hillcrest area. You can catch the UCSD shuttle from Hillcrest med center to UCSD campus, then get to Scripps easily from there. It's no bad.

You can give up on this right away, you'll need to have a roommate. SD is extremely expensive. I disagree with Xeno's remark about University Heights though, maybe they are talking about City Heights? SD is super safe and the only places that are even mildly sketchy are City Heights and Barrio Logan. I wouldn't recommend University Heights unless you have a car though - despite the name it's not close to any of the universities in San Diego and you would have to have a car. I would recommend Hillcrest for cheaper rent and okay commute, but yeah you're going to have to get a roommate unless you can manage to snag something cheap (which is difficult because it's so competitive).

[Absinthetrip]

Hi, I'm joining the Scripps la jolla graduate program this fall. I'm from India. Term starts August. I've heard and read the area is really really expensive. Anyone from Scripps or ucsd or salk or any other nearby place who can give me ground information, options, pages i can reliably look through? Also, how expensive/easy to get are studio apartments, typically?

[TongueSten]

On 3/7/2016 at 4:56 AM, Absinthetrip said:

Hi, I'm joining the Scripps la jolla graduate program this fall. I'm from India. Term starts August. I've heard and read the area is really really expensive. Anyone from Scripps or ucsd or salk or any other nearby place who can give me ground information, options, pages i can reliably look through? Also, how expensive/easy to get are studio apartments, typically?

I will very likely attend Scripps in the Fall too, and I had/have many of the same questions. I asked as many current students as I could during the interview/visit weekend. Here's the gist of what I was told:

Transportation: You pretty much need a car. The overwhelming majority of the students I spoke to owned cars; everything is so spaced out in San Diego that not having a car makes your life harder than it needs to be. That being said, one or two people I met relied on the bus system and they were perfectly happy with it, but they did tend to live closer to the campus. These people also mentioned that grocery shopping can be difficult.

Housing: The impression I got is that most 1st year students live in an area called UTC (which is very close to the campus), and then move further away (Del Mar, Pacific Beach) later on. Of the people in UTC, most people seemed to pay ~$900/month in rent for a shared living situation. Everyone told me that they found housing on Craigslist; my own searches indicate that a studio apartment in UTC will cost at least $1100/month.

 

I hope this is helpful to you. I am not from the area, but I have several of the same concerns as you and figured I would share the information I have gathered.