<p>if he'll be a junior, he's 95%+ to get a single if he wants one. The typical distribution is identified below, along with the Comparable Housing Market Rate (CHMR) that your son might find a room in morningside heights for.</p>
<p>5-10%: Hogan, EC Townhouse, or Ruggles via getting pulled into an RA suite, a special interest suite, mixed-class groups, etc. CHMR: $1000-1200/mo.</p>
<p>5%: One-bedroom apartment in Watt or Woodbridge, shared with a roommate but with ~500sf of living space total. Has private kitchen and bath, as well as a large living room and bedroom. Often the living room becomes a curtained-off 2nd bedroom, but doubles as a hangout space. CHMR: $1200-1500/mo (at least in the morningside area split 2 ways).</p>
<p>20%: Single in an EC Exclusion suite (large living room/kitchen with 3 singles and 1 double taken by sophomores, plus a bathroom). CHMR: $1200/mo.</p>
<p>10%: Single in Broadway, a new (built in 2000) corridor-style dorm with a quieter atmosphere, nice-but-not-great floor lounges, and decent views. CHMR: $900-1000.</p>
<p>25%: Single in Schapiro, a new-ish (1980s) corridor-style dorm on 115th, right next to Morton Williams Supermarket. Has smaller floors than broadway, and lounges are a little more home-y (combines kitchen/living room in one space). Views, lighting and air from the upper floors is pretty nice. Rooms are comparable in size to broadway, but as a whole the building doesn't have the same "hotel clean" feeling to it, especially with the bathrooms/showers. CHMR: $900/mo.</p>
<p>25%: Single in Wien, an older building on 116th st with larger rooms but poorer noiseproofing and ventilation, and co-ed bathrooms/showers (which starts off as awkward but you get used to it). It's located next to EC and the law school/SIPA. CHMR: $700-800/mo.</p>
<p>5-10%: Joined a group of sophomores for a suite in 47 Claremont or Ruggles, or a group of seniors for something nicer. You'll end up with a single, in a larger suite, sharing a kitchen/bathroom. CHMR could be anything.</p>
<p>~5%: Get shut out of the singles/apartments pool and forced to take a double room, typically in Wien, McBain or Schapiro. Then (assuming you don't like it), you file a summer transfer request, and almost always can get "a single" if that's the only requirement you make in the transfer request. You'll end up in any one of the above, but with less choice in the particulars. You may even end up in what is typically senior housing if things fall the right way.</p>
<p>Hope that helps. As you can tell from the CHMRs, you get a serious discount from market rates when living in dorms, and you also:</p>
<p>1) Don't have to pay an egregious broker fee for an apartment in manhattan (when i got my current apt, the broker fee was 12% of a year's rent, came to over $4000).
2) Live <em>right on campus</em>, rather than a 10-minute walk.
3) No need for an extensive, time-consuming search
4) No "surprises" once you move in - everything is pretty well known and documented about the dorms, you won't suddenly discover your apartment is, say, full of roaches (but if you do, maintenance will come and do their thing, rather than waiting for your building superintendent to fill out a work order for some 3rd party).</p>
<p>etc.</p>