<p>Go to boston, it’s the ultimate college city and oth colleges are almost identical as far as prestige goes</p>
<h2>bluebayou wrote: "Both are strong, but BC’s is primarily in the NE. Great if you want to work there… "</h2>
<p>Seems like a stalemate to me in terms of employability… Ross has a better rep, but BC is in the Boston/NY are which means some smaller firms will interview there out of convenience (same trip as MIT/Harvard/Tufts) that won’t send an interviewer to Ross. It also may mean more available interneships… but that is just a gut feel and not based on facts.</p>
<p>“I know that BC is technically not in Boston, but its very close!” </p>
<p>I think I’ve clarified this point a dozen times on CollegeConfidential. BC’s campus straddles the Boston/Newton line, so part of it is IN Boston, and the rest abuts Boston. So it’s not “way out in the suburbs” as so many people claim. There is no actual city or town of Chestnut Hill. It is a neighborhood that extends into several actual municipalities. See this: <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_Hill,_Massachusetts[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_Hill,_Massachusetts</a></p>
<p>“My main concern about sending my own kids to Michigan is the off-campus housing, which looks pretty bad if you want to be anywhere near campus. How many years can students live in Michigan dorms? All 4 years?”</p>
<p>Get a grip. Ann Arbor is one of the safest cities for it’s size anywhere in the entire country. The off campus housing might not be luxurious, but it is plentiful and nearby most areas of the campus. A relatively short, safe walk is what most students who live off campus take everyday.</p>
<p>I’d say Ann Arbor>Boston for a true collegiate experience. Boston has many fine schools, but most of them are in the suburbs surrounding the city. A2 and U-M are completely interchangeable. One doesn’t exist without the other. It has a special feeling all of it’s own and one that it doesn’t have to share with any other schools, businesses, etc.</p>
<p>Ann Arbor > Boston</p>
<p>Rjkofnovi, I wasn’t talking about the safety in Ann Arbor, I’m talking about the run-down houses all over the place, which don’t come cheap, and which thousands of students end up living in. College students have enough on their plates without fighting with landlords about why the furnace isn’t working and why the tenants upstairs need to have a party going every night. The heartiest endorsement of the off-campus housing is that it is “plentiful”? I lived off-campus my last year at BC, and I got a nice bedroom and my own bathroom on the third floor of a beautiful big house a few minutes from campus. The only other people in the house were the owner, his wife, and his two kids. The owner was the president of a major Boston-based mutual fund company. There were quite a few other very wealthy people with huge houses around there who rented out a room or two to students, apparently so that there’d be someone there when they were off on vacations or whatever.</p>
<p>^^^^^Wow. What a wonderful college experience living with a family of four. Just what every college student dreams of! Meantime, back in the real world, the OP shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a decent place to live with people close to his/her own age. I am more than certain there would also be rooms to rent in upscale housing fairly nearby if the OP were looking for that. The neighborhoods just east of the campus are quite wealthy.</p>
<p>rjko, it was an perfect situation to study in a clean and quiet setting. Sorry if I wanted to actually study while in college. I was alone on the third floor of their house. No noise, no cockroaches. Something wrong with that? You seem offended because someone had a better college experience than you did. Maybe that’s why you retreated all the way out to the most blah suburb (Novi).</p>
<p>Schmaltz, check out Maynard House, Tower Plaza, University Towers and several other residential buildings within a 5 minute walk of central campus. Rent in those places isn’t cheap, but it is affordable for many students. I personally lived in a studio in Tower Plaza. The building was extremely well built, quiet and filled with other students. </p>
<p>You also have, you have many nicely built houses around campus that are houses by students. Obviously, many students end up living in very mediocre houses, but honestly, mostof them chose to live in those houses. They really don’t mind the quality and simply don’t want to pay more money for a room where they are basically just going to sleep. Are 100% of students happy with their housing arrangements? Of course not. Do you know of a university where 100% of students are happy with their housing? But housing is not a problem for the majority of students at Michigan.</p>
<p>Schmaltz, Am I to understand that you base your college decisions on off-campus housing?</p>
<p>^ His posts do imply that which, IMO, seems the wrong way to judge a university. </p>
<p>Schmaltz, since I’ve arrived at Michigan few years ago, this university has been on a building boom. They are scheduled to open a brand new academic and residential complex (North Quad) in Fall 2010. There are also newer residential properties (condos, apartments) for students who have the means to live in modern housing. Not everyone chooses to live in the historic (19th-century Midwestern architecture) houses that surround the campus. For students who want to live off-campus near a bus line (many graduate students select this option), there are many decent and affordable housing choices.</p>
<p>“You seem offended because someone had a better college experience than you did. Maybe that’s why you retreated all the way out to the most blah suburb (Novi).”</p>
<p>Where in the world did you get that idea from? I had a wonderful college experience. Btw, I haven’t lived in Novi for quite some time. I just never changed my screen name. Not that there is anything wrong with that!</p>
<p>Vinceh, this is a thread about Michigan v. BC. I went to BC, and have lived 20 min. from Ann Arbor for the last 2 decades. I have been to Ann Arbor countless times, and have never been favorably impressed with the houses near campus that lots and lots of students seem to live in. RJK’s gives them a backhanded compliment by calling them “plentiful” and even Alexandre admits that they are “mediocre,” but rather expensive alternatives are available.</p>
<p>Like most large universities, Mich. has dorms for less than half of its undergrads. I asked in an earlier post if anybody knew if there was a limit on how many years a person can live in the dorms, but nobody bothered answering that…it was apparently easier to jump on me for things I didn’t even say. </p>
<p>The off-campus situation is extremely relevant if at least half of the OP’s time there will be off-campus, especially considering that my own experience at BC was one in which on-campus housing was available for 3 or 4 years. It was always clean and safe, and sometimes even plush. Off-campus housing for me and for other people I knew, often involved having secluded quarters in nearby private homes that were always roomy and beautiful, and were sometimes actually mansions.</p>
<p>I’m trying to flesh out the options for the OP, that’s all.</p>
<p>To each his own Schmaltz. Both areas have their merits, but I honestly think you’re making way too big of a deal about off campus housing. This would NEVER be a deciding factor for me in making a decision about attending a university. This is especially true since you use the appearance of some housing as a defining factor and generalize too much about an entire city of over 115,000 people. Also, I would say that the vast majority of students have had enough living in a dorm more than one or two years at most. It seems apparent that you did as well.</p>
<p>Schmaltz, the laws of supply and demand will prevail, even in Ann Arbor. If students wanted better housing options, the university and city will provide them. Like I said, there are as many nice housing options as the students desire. This is clearly a non-issue though. Living conditions is not one of Michigan’s weaknesses. Yes, housing and dorm options can stand to improve, but most students at Michigan are satisfied with their housing setup. Overall, in terms of quality of life, the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor are hard to match.</p>
<p>There are a lot of different housing options in Ann Arbor. Dorm living is available for upperclassmen but most students want to live there only a year or two. There is big Greek system and many students live in fraternity or sorority houses. Off campus life at Michigan is also very vibrant. There are a lot of off campus housing options and they very in quality in price and yes the better maintained properties are more expensive. A lot of the off campus properties are very close to campus and convenient. Some students prefer the off campus situtation because it offers a place to park a car.</p>