<p>So I was just admitted into carnegie, and I'm going to major in Fine Arts and minor in Business Administration [none of that was important, but maybe i could find some comrades in either school who'd help me out ;p]. </p>
<p>Anyway, I live in Florida, and I've been in a long distance relationship with my girlfriend in Texas for two years. She didn't get into Carnegie, so she's going to Virginia Tech instead. I really love this girl with all my heart and soul, and we promised each other we'd visit the other's school every other week [I go down one weekend, she goes the next, etc]. </p>
<p>I used mapquest and calculated the drive to be around 5 hours and 30 minutes long, which is nothing for me [I drive to gainesville every other weekend to see some friends at UF, which is easily six hours], but the administration says I can't have a car if I'm living on campus, which they will force me to do as a freshman.</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me how to get around the freshman anti-car rule? I was thinking about keeping it in a lot or something like that off campus, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing this. Can anyone give me any suggestions, or possibly an alternate route to Virginia Tech or Blacksburg, VA that doesn't involve spending insane amounts of money on trains and buses and so on?</p>
<p>1) Join a frat. You can park your car in their lot. </p>
<p>2) Park off campus, like at Rodef Shalom or some other off-campus place nearby. I don’t really recommend this option since there are a ton of car break-ins in Pittsburgh, even in our lots which have security patrols at night.</p>
<p>3) Find a friend who lives off campus and park in his/her garage.</p>
<p>1] I’m digging the frat option, but I feel like that’ll led me into some ugly situations at parties and I don’t really want a bunch of “bros” giving me garbage about being with one girl in college. Maybe I’m assuming to much and thinking of frat brothers stereotypically, so feel free to shove my naivete in my face if you like. It’s actually appreciated.</p>
<p>2] Do you mean just like in a lot off campus? I was thinking more along the lines of a professional garage or something. This seems like the easy yet dangerous option.</p>
<p>3] I don’t know anyone in pitt :[ I have friends going to the U of Pitt, but thats about it.</p>
<p>4] Arguably the most costly, but definitely the safest after I thought bout it. Guess I’m gonna have to get a job :p</p>
<p>seriously, thank you kate for helping me out.</p>
<p>IMO
I think you’d be better off at another school.
The time and effort commitment at CMU is very high.
Sounds like you will not be able to make that commitment, especially at the tuition CMU charges.</p>
<p>I’ve been in a long distance relationship with the man of my dreams for this entire freshman year. Despite completing double major coursework with an intended triple major or minor, we’ve managed to find time to visit quite often - and we’re still crazy about each other, and everything’s worked out fine. So fine, in fact, that he’s coming to the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU as a grad student this coming fall. ;)</p>
<p>If you want to hold on to this relationship, you can make it work, no matter what your schedule is like, zigg. I would say though that not all the frats are the annoying “bro” type - I think you’d mostly find that with SigEp, Pike, and Beta. The others are fairly supportive of relationships, it seems, since I know a few guys from each one who have steady girlfriends on/off campus. However, parking in a covered garage somewhere else could also be a good option.</p>
<p>When you’re dealing with a city school, where parking is tight, a car can be a burden. If you’re able to find a garage off campus, consider getting to and from the garage could be a pain. If you’re in a frat, they won’t have space for everyone’s car, so if you’re a freshman or soph, don’t plan on getting a spot (lol my son was in one of the “bro” frats mentioned…he had a gf much of his CMU years, as did some of his friends…nobody cared).</p>
<p>One thing I give credit to CMU and Pgh cops, especially Shadyside where son lived one year…if you’re illegally parked, they will find you, and fast. If I had back all the money I pd for parking tickets, I could retire. In Shadyside, and Squirrel Hill too, residents have stickers for street parking…if you’re not a resident you’re out of luck, and this is most of the area around CMU.</p>
<p>Everyone is different, but you may not have as much free time as you think. Son cruised through freshman year but hit a wall in a couple soph courses. Consider you’d be in a car 12 hours every other weekend… I hope it works out for you, it sounds like you have a good relationship, but it won’t be easy. Also, consider, how will your roommate, unless you’re in a single, take to your girlfriend moving in every other weekend? And hers at VT to you moving in every other weekend down there? </p>
<p>btw his hs gf transferred form a Phila college to UPitt after their freshman year. After about a year, or possibly two, that was the end. Luckily she ended up liking Pitt.</p>
<p>even if you were in one of the 3 frats that kate mentioned as being especially “bro”, (one of which i may or may not be a member of :P) i sincerely doubt that you will find pressure from any organization on campus to cut off a relationship that is obviously working for you. </p>
<p>I do not think joining a frat is a good solution to your transportation problem… if you want to join one, by all means do so, but realize that you won’t get a bid until 3 weeks into the school year. Even then, with an exception or two, there will still be a semester long pledge process, during which time I can guarantee you will have 0% chance of getting a parking spot.</p>
<p>If you absolutely need a car out here then there is free parking on some city streets a few blocks away, though you have to be careful about tickets from street sweeping days and break-ins and whatnot. </p>
<p>I’m not sure if it is possible, but you may want to look into using the misc.market bboard to try and find a current student who could buy the parking spot for you</p>
<p>Bus- $200
Train- No train station in Blacksburg, VA
Car- You could join a frat and see how your lucky you get with a parking space. You could find a parking garage but that would be really expensive.</p>
<p>Every other week would be about 15 trips costing about 3000 a year if you go with the bus. If you decide to be a gentlemen and cover her costs it would cost you about 6000 a year. I have no clue how much a parking garage would cost. If you join a frat just for a parking space you would be extremely miserable.</p>
<p>So I guess that narrows it down to two choices</p>
<p>A. Get a full time summer job and probably a campus job
B. Skype</p>
<p>I mean you no disrespect and not to cheapen your relationship-- but at 18, it’s not like you have years of an adult relationship behind you to be making your educational plans based on whether you continue an LDR given transportation issues.</p>
<p>I agree with other posters-- CMU is not the place for you if your heart and your car are the drivers of your educational plans.</p>
<p>Fly every other month …it’s less money in the long run.</p>
<p>I’m surprised nobody mentioned the ZipCar option. If you’re going to be going down every two weeks, it might be more economical to just rent a ZipCar for that period of time. I doubt you’ll be using the car much during your freshmen year since you pretty much have to eat on campus and if you do eat off campus, everything is within walking distance.</p>
<p>Sorry, bco. No offense meant. Although - I don’t know if you’re in Pike or not, but if you are, the lifeguard “girl watching” towers are really sketch…</p>
<p>ZipCar or misc.market are definitely good places to look for spots. ZipCar’s prices tend to be good, too, but there are also car rental places that are cheaper if you can afford them. That’s another option if you have the money to do it.</p>
<p>I think most LDR kids end up visiting about once a month, like I do, because it’s a little too expensive to manage more time than that. But it seems to work out for the most part.</p>
<p>And if you care about this girl, then don’t bother with the crap other people are giving you, especially those who haven’t been in this situation before. I think people are being a little unnecessarily mean - the guy just asked if there was a way he could bring a car to school, not for your guys’ opinions on whether he should stay with his girlfriend. Grow up.</p>
<p>You two will find a way to make it work if it’s meant to be when you get to college.</p>
<p>Just want to say that visiting every weekend seems a little ambitious to me. People tend to do a lot of homework on weekends, and if you’re tied up with a girlfriend every weekend you’re going to have a difficult time not just making friends, but finding people to get your work done with. My girlfriend used to go to a different school about an hour and a half away from me, but since both of us were in engineering (me dealing with a full load in grad school, her with a senior engineering courseload) we found visiting for one weekend a month to generally be the best we could manage.</p>
<p>I live in Pittsburgh and drive by CMU campus almost every day, there are plenty of places to park long term in oakland if you dont mind paying for a garage. Also, rodef’s lot is empty most of the time, and you can just park it on the street in oakland. Around central catholic high school is really safe, don’t believe the earlier post, Pittsburgh is ridiculously safe, rarely are there break-ins. I’m also in a long distance relationship, i live in Pittsburgh and she lives in Philly, but shes a junior and I’m going to Temple, which is around 20mins away from her. I’m worried people will look down on me if I have a girlfriend who’s still in high school, so I hope people are okay with that. My LDR is manageable, we talk often and we take turns every month visiting. Every other week won’t work, you want to be in the social scene at CMU (or lack thereof…), no one wants to be “that kid” that no one knows or likes. Try once a month. Good luck!!</p>
<p>To do overnight parking on the street in Oakland don’t you need a city-issued permit (unless you’re feeding meters 24/7)? I remember when I was living in Shadyside you needed a permit in order to park on the street (and, actually, four years later that sticker is still on my car, haha).</p>
<p>Ahh, fair enough. I never actually lived down in Oakland (closest I had was when I was living in Shady Oak, and I got CMU to sign off on a parking permit), so I wasn’t familiar with the rules in that part of town.</p>
<p>Why are we discussing this? This thread is from April lol. Anywho… I don’t know why the school says freshman can’t have their cars here, I literally know of at least 5 freshmen, not including myself who have their cars here. I do park off campus, because I live in one of the university-owned apartments that is off campus so I park through the apartment building, but I know of a freshman that has a permit in the main parking garage, one in the Morewood lot, and the others all park on campus at the new dorm that has a parking garage underneath it since it used to be a hospice.</p>
<p>I guess they changed their policy (or got more lenient). When I was a freshman you had to park your car up in Schenley Park and deal with the guarantee of having it broken into at least once.</p>
<p>If your freshmen friends are parking in the lots, they must have had someone purchase a parking space for them against university policy. The rules have not changed, freshmen are still not allowed to have cars, and that’s unlikely to change soon.</p>
<p>The reasons for this are threefold. First, having a car ruins the whole “take the bus” social experience that a lot of freshmen get to have - going for Giant Eagle runs or heading downtown on the 61b to get Caribou Coffee are things that so many first years do in groups, and it’s a lot of fun. Learning to navigate public transportation is a super valuable skill that, honestly, I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. (In socal there is no real bus system.) </p>
<p>Secondly, CMU just doesn’t have a whole lot of parking. When you account for faculty + upperclassmen, that already amounts to a nearly-full east campus garage. Accounting for freshmen having cars might mean stiffer competition for parking passes and would probably be sort of a headache.</p>
<p>Lastly-- and this is the reason you won’t see on the FAQ website-- I think the university is concerned with drinking and driving. A lot of parties are held on Beeler or in Squirrel Hill, which is a short bus ride away from any freshman dorm. Freshmen are generally stupid about their own drinking limits and will do dumb **** like get behind the wheel while intoxicated. (I nearly got into a crash with a friend freshman year because she claimed she was ‘good to drive’ and definitely was not.) Disallowing cars and forcing them to take the bus might be doing them an unknown favor.</p>
<p>I know that CMU is planning to turn the Morewood lot into an underground parking lot at some point. That was in a 10-year plan draft, though, so don’t hold your breath. :p</p>
<p>If your just going to have your car sitting there and use it every once in a while, I think your best best is going to be an indoor/underground garage. My Dad works at Pitt and I frequently walk from S&S underground parking where he has a pass to park year round (I think he pays by month, and it IS expensive) to CM library which is really close to CMU. I can’t imagine the walk would be too much once or twice or month or whatever. </p>
<p>Nothing is really going to be cost-efficient, but at least in an underground parking lot, you have less chance of having your car broken into or hit when some dumbass is trying to parallel park. Some of the drivers in Oakland (and pedestrians for that matter) are brutal.</p>
Grow up.</p>