<p>By the way, the carpets are supposed to be hypoallergenic and stain resistant (and somehow they live up to expectations). No complaints from S in MaxP.</p>
<p>By the way, the carpets are supposed to be hypoallergenic and stain resistant (and somehow they live up to expectations). No complaints from S in MaxP. He’s staying for 2nd year.</p>
<p>But if you move off campus, you still retain your house affiliation right?
So if you’re “off campus,” how do you interact with your house-mates?</p>
<p>Moving off-campus means moving out of housing. You don’t retain your house affiliation. You’re outside housing, period.</p>
<p>neogop, My son requested BJ as his first choice. He didn’t request any certain house within it though as he didn’t know enough about the dynamics of the different houses. There was a fairly large population of first years in his house this year. Also, not all rooms within Salisbury are carpeted. I don’t know about the rest of BJ.</p>
<p>Phuriku, forgive me if I misunderstood, but when I was visiting, I inferred that there was three kinds of housing:
On-campus: living in a university owned building which is physically “on campus.” You have access to all the dining halls.
Off-campus 1: living in a university owned building which is physically “off campus.” You have access to the dining halls, but also your own means of food. Usually apartment or suite-like accommodations.
Off-campus 2: living in a privately owned building (i.e. not affiliated with the university) which is “off campus.” You are free to choose where you live within Chicago and are for all intensive purposes a “commuter student.”</p>
<p>This is just what it sounded like to me from the students. If so, does off-campus 1 (which is an arbitrary name that I gave it) retain the house affiliation? If I am, wrong please correct me. </p>
<p>@sparent. Thanks, that’s nice to know that there IS some carpet and that you can request your dorm.</p>
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<p>I think you’re a bit confused. Per your definitions, off-campus 1 is pretty much identical to on-campus, especially to incoming students since minimum/moderate plans no longer exist for them. Off-campus 1 students (say, students who live in Broadview or Breckinridge) are treated exactly the same as on-campus students. They have their own house tables in the dining halls just like everyone else.</p>
<p>(Most people simply refer to off-campus 1 as on-campus as well, since other than distance, they’re exactly the same. Also, there’s no difference in room style. Off-campus 1 dorms are no more apartment-like or suite-like than on-campus dorms except for perhaps Stony Island.)</p>
<p>Oh, that’s kind of a shame. I’m a fan of the 4 year housing thing… or at least I am right now… who knows in 4 years time what I’ll think.</p>
<p>^I’m a bit the same way. The prospect of moving off-campus, as an entering student, seems daunting to me. But I suppose I could be ready for it in two years.</p>
<p>You will realize in due time that moving off campus has a lot of advantages, particularly regarding money. If you don’t qualify for financial aid, you could save about $5k/year just by moving into a decent apartment. If you really pushed it, you could save $10k. Even though I did qualify for financial aid, I moved off-campus last year and saved about $5k. It was a disaster, and I’m moving back on-campus, but it saved me a hell of a lot of money.</p>
<p>Phuriku, could you tell us why moving off-campus was a disaster? If it was for personal reasons, no need to elaborate of course, but if there was an error in logistics or commute or safety or something, the knowledge might benefit future off-campus-dwellers (and most current or incoming Chicago students, according to casual statistics, seem to be candidates for that).</p>
<p>I’d like to hear why moving off campus was a disaster for phuriku, too. It was 100% great for my kids. We didn’t save anything like $5,000 apiece, but the $1,500 or so apiece wasn’t chump change, either.</p>
<p>neogop, you are way off base if you think off-campus students at Chicago are “for all intensive purposes” ( the idiom is “all intents and purposes”) “commuter students”. When people talk about “commuter students”, they usually mean students who do not live in the university community, usually live some distance away (often with their families), and do not spend much more than the minimum necessary time on campus or participate to any great extent in university activities. While there are a handful of true commuter students at Chicago, 99% of those living off campus are living within walking distance of campus, are living with other students and next door to other students, etc., are spending most of their waking hours on campus, and are participating fully in the life of the university. (Good thing, too, because comparatively few upperclassmen live ON campus. If they weren’t participating in the life of the university, it would be a much poorer place.) </p>
<p>My son lived off campus last year in an apartment with three other undergraduates, in a building in which all the apartments were rented by undergraduates. It was half a block from one of the dorms. Almost everyone in the building was involved to a greater or lesser extent in one particular EC, so they all knew each other, saw each other a lot, were in and out of each other’s apartments . . . a lot like a dorm, or in this case a theme house. The main difference was that they cooked most of their own meals, didn’t have RAs or RHs, didn’t have security guards, and all of them had their own bedrooms. And my son really appreciated that this apartment was only 1-1/2 blocks from the site of his OTHER main EC, and about the same distance from his then-girlfriend’s dorm – i.e., about 1-1/2 miles closer to both than his original dorm.</p>
<p>He remained friends with lots of people in his original house. He had a leadership role on his Scav Hunt team. He had a job on campus. He was much happier with his housing situation than he had been in the dorm.</p>
<p>My S moved off campus after his first year and stayed in the same apartment with the same core of roommates for 3 years. Financially we saved money, and he enjoyed living with his friends and learning to manage life. I do not think that he, in any way, felt detached from campus life. He was very involved in his extracurriculars and seemed to be on-campus much of the time, going back and forth as his schedule required. My D has just moved off campus after her second year and is currently living in her apartment for the summer. She’s living about 2 blocks from the main quads and still uses the gym daily. She lives across the street from 2 buildings that are mainly filled with students, so I don’t think there’s any sense of isolation. Further, she has told me that she can become a “house affiliate” or something like that when she returns from abroad in the winter quarter. That will allow her access to her old dorm and she can participate on their IM teams etc. Seems like a great compromise for students who are ready and able to move out of housing, but want to retain their relationships with their original houses.</p>
<p>Let’s just say that I was a bit too hasty in trying to save money for my parents, and that I was also under a bit of stress since I had to pay for my entire summer stay through REU funds (which, after taxes, were about $2070 total; since then, they have risen). So I had to find somewhere really cheap and I chose a really bad place to stay in a reputably dangerous area of Hyde Park. Rent was $220/month, which is about as cheap as you’re going to find anywhere.</p>
<p>Anyway, there were obviously a few problems with this. Number one, I decided that if I were going to move into such a sketchy area, I had to be home by 10pm every night. It’s really the only safe way, especially when the shuttles don’t come by your house. I think this had the biggest effect on my life, since I couldn’t concentrate in the house because of the hostile attitude one of my roommates was emanating so that I couldn’t do my work properly (there were a few times when he would literally try to start a fistfight - he had some MAJOR anger management problems). Secondly, I was an idiot and got on the lease. I will tell every student here, NO MATTER WHERE YOU MOVE, DO NOT GET ON THE LEASE IF THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW LIVING IN THE HOUSE. Why? Because people, and yes, even Chicago students, are terribly irresponsible and they think they can just leave if they’re not on the lease whenever they want, without telling anyone. This was a major cause of stress for me, for I was constantly going through marketplace trying to find new roommates to replace the old ones. I finally found a few that stuck, but I was responsible for paying their rent (they would have to repay me) and their payments were always ridiculously late (months late, sometimes).</p>
<p>So, lessons learned. Never move out with people you don’t know personally, even if they seem like friendly people at first. Never get on the lease. If you like staying out late or need to for studying, don’t live in a place that isn’t serviced by the shuttle system. And don’t choose the place you live in only for the money - it simply isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>Since then, I got a summer sublet in a pretty safe area with a friend of a friend, am paying only about $200/month more than I was paying last year, and haven’t run into any problems thus far. (I’m very thankful that I can pay through this through a rise of funding for REU.) As far as I see, it’s hit or miss, but the lower the price tag is, the more suspicious you should be.</p>
<p>Yeah, wow. $220/month is pretty rock bottom. I shudder to think. It doesn’t surprise me that you can get something decent for about twice that, but I wouldn’t have thought you could get anything in any area called “Hyde Park” for that little. I’m sorry that you had to go through that much stress.</p>
<p>Phuriku has good advice. You may not be able to avoid getting on the lease, but make sure you’re not the ONLY one on the lease. Know your housemates, and if possible know their parents, too, so you can call someone when they short you on the rent. Make certain that everyone takes his obligations seriously. It’s worth some investment to be comfortable coming and going from where you live.</p>
<p>@JHS
Really?! I never knew that. I guess because it’s an idiom I’ve never seen it written before and only heard it in conversation (and often with a Texas accent it can sound like “intensive” instead of “intents and”). Sorry! 'Twas the fault of my ear. I’m a little embarrassed that over 17 years I never realized that… but then again I’m still unsure whether it’s “no pain no gain” or “no pain no game.” Many apologies, but at least you understood what I was saying, which is the purpose of communication, right? So no harm, no foul. </p>
<p>And that’s pretty interesting, actually. I will certainly look into off campus housing (especially if I do get to Chicago). Now that I think about it, it doesn’t sound so bad. Just cooking your own meals it sounds like and paying as you go, not all up front. And, runnersmom, that is very nice to know that you CAN retain your affiliation while off campus. I’m quite interested in playing intramural sports (hopefully they have Ultimate Frisbee). </p>
<p>Thank you all for easing my qualms.</p>
<p>Ultimate Frisbee is its own little world at Chicago. I don’t think they have an intramural league for it, but they have a very active club that plays teams from other schools. Much of the team used to live together at an apartment building nicknamed Pepperland where fun was very much kept alive, until they closed the building for renovations a year ago. I think many of them moved en masse to another building. Newmassdad knows more about this than I; his daughter (among many, many other talents) was reputedly an Ultimate stalwart.</p>
<p>Frisbee moved to another building-- I have heard that the landlords are very happy to host these guys. While cleanup and repair costs might be high, it’s a guarantee that their building is going to be <em>very</em> popular with tenants.</p>
<p>RIP Pepperland :-(</p>
<p>Hmm interesting… that would be fun. I’m not Ultimate obsessed, but I play every other day in the spring time, which is fun. And I’m not super good or anything, it’s just a nice recreational activity. But interesting, I’ll look into that!</p>
<p>Oh, another question came to my mind as my dad dropped some mail (unfortunately nothing from UChicago) in my room.</p>
<p>This is kinda about dorms, depends on the answer. How does the university run mail? Is there a university post office for student use (with “mailboxes”)? Or do students have to use normal USPS post offices and have to take out a PO box?</p>