<p>What are the good apartments for grad students to check out? Closer to CMU the better, so preferably within reasonable walking distance. I've searched online a bit and I'm finding a LOT of places with many negative reviews, and the places themselves don't look too great either.</p>
<p>a lot of the grad students seem to share houses on beeler (beelermont?) street which is very close by. try craigslist. you might also wish to contact the particular department or program and ask if there are any current grad students looking for a housemate…or any graduating ones with an apartment or house to “hand down.” cmu is of course very wired: chances are there’s a university-specific online listing of available apartments or those looking for housemates, or you could post that you’re looking.</p>
<p>whoops-i forgot to mention this good resource also: “rentjungle”…</p>
<p>padmapper is also a really nice site. It combs through a bunch of websites and then overlays it onto Google Maps so you can search geographically.</p>
<p>I just want to mention it’s really not that big of a deal to live within walking distance of the school. I lived for a while up in Squirrel Hill and found my commute time via bus to actually be shorter than a few other places I lived that were within walking distance.</p>
<p>If you want walking distance, though, you might want to look at the border of North Oakland and Shadyside which is stuff above something like Fifth and Craig. You generally don’t want to stay in anything near Bates since that can be a pretty sketchy area (and it is a pretty decent walk into CMU). Everything west of Craig is, for the most part, “Pitt territory,” so you’ll see a lot more undergrads from there if you live that way. Pitt grad students often live up in Squirrel Hill and Shadyside since it only adds a minute or two onto their bus ride for a bit nicer living.</p>
<p>Shadyside and Squirrel Hill are not as close as some sections of Oakland, but they are much nicer neighborhoods in my opinion. Housing is relatively inexpensive in Pittsburgh compared to other major (and bigger) U.S cities and there are plenty of vacant apartments available.</p>