I’m in incoming freshman at Davis (class of 2020) and how the hell are people finding roommates? The facebook page doesn’t seem very informative, and the ■■■■■■■■ site doesn’t seem very useful either. I’m planning on a dorm in Tercero, double.
Also (I’m an int’l student)what do people usually wear, what clothes/shoes should I bring, and how much?
Also, does Segundo provide a better “dorm experience” than Tercero? Where do most freshmen live?
Clothes: it gets very hot in autumn and spring months and very rainy/cold in the winter months, so plan accordingly.
The housing office usually assigns your housing if you haven’t found a roommate. All freshman live on-campus.
My next big question was actually how good an idea it is to live off-campus freshman year! I called the uni and they said it was an option, which I am considering seriously because of costs. Other than the “experience” is there anything else I will be potentially missing out on? Like security/food etc?
And I do know that they assign roommates, but I know people who are looking for roommates on their own to prevent complications later.
You could have trouble finding roommates for off-campus housing this late. But other than the dorm experience, I can’t think of any reasons not to live off-campus if you can.
My advice with the dorms is to go with random roommates, simply because that avoids having prior expectations of your roommate(s). I’ve heard too many stories of people who think they have an amazing roommate situation figured out and go in with all these expectations, only for there to be massive disappointment. Sure you could get a terrible roommate through random selection (I personally did), but it doesn’t happen as often as you may think. You just hear the people with the terrible roommates complaining the loudest for obvious reasons. Remember, a roommate is just someone you live with; as long as you can get along well enough to live with each other, you’re fine.
Really? Because a friend of mine at UCD in the year above told me she’d heard “horror stories” about people who wound up with the wrong roommates. She told me its way better idea to choose your roommate 
Anyway, its just 1 year…I’m actually cool with any kind unless she is horribly messy, or has “overnight visitors” (I have some safety issues with that)
I know multiple people that chose their roommates for UCD and had a terrible experience. I don’t go to UCD but from my personal experience, it’s a lot better to get randomly housed with someone that it is to choose a person you think you know online.
The rents around Davis are less expensive because you generally have several roommates who help divide the costs. This means you will have to divide and pay for your internet from ComCast, your rent and renter’s insurance, electric bills, etc. If you haven’t already set aside your first and last month’s rent, then add that to your costs. Also learn to bike into the campus or take the bus. There is a learning curve for this. If you’re bringing a car, you may be limited by the apartment parking issues.
My dd just subleased her apartment for two months. After the two months, her subleaser will acquire the room. She and her boatload of friends, who graduated this year, did this. Many apartments, with good locations, were picked up at the end of this school year.
I think its easier to live on campus the first year because you find your future compatible roomates when you go into off-campus housing for years 2,3, and 4.
With regard to what type of weather to expect, this link shows average high and low temperatures and rainfall, by month: http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/davis/california/united-states/usca0284/2016/1
I only graduated from UCD a couple weeks ago, and I’m one of the few people I know who had a legitimately horrible random roommate. I also met one of my best friends through that housing situation (I was in a triple). On the other hand, nearly all the stories I’ve heard of people trying to arrange roommates beforehand turned out horribly. A lot of it is luck of the draw, to be fair.
As I’ve heard it, when you go with a random roommate you either come out with a new friend, or you don’t and you just never see each other again. When you go with an arranged roommate, you’re potentially losing a friend very badly depending on how well you actually live together.
For what it’s worth, through pure happenstance I wound up randomly assigned to live with a couple people I already knew in my sophomore year (student housing apartments). We didn’t know each other well enough for there to be expectations, but we knew each other’s personalities enough to adjust easily. It turned out we lived with each other well enough to live together junior and senior year, so the random pairing of people who happened to know each other also happened to work out. So I kind of have experience both ways, though my experience with roommates I already knew was pure coincidence.
DD also graduated two weeks ago.
First year
-Random roommates assigned by the university, in a triple, who had nothing in common. They weren’t pigs and they lived their own lives so, it was just a place to sleep. They were all in different majors and never really saw each other again.
Second year, in a condo with friends, lots of financial and stealing/“borrowing” of personal stuff. My dd was the first to move out.
Third and Fourth year-
with one acquaintance, in a large shared townhouse of 7 young ladies. They all had moved in during different periods of their university careers and the property management divided for each share of rent and utilities.
To get along, a previous grad had organized everything, via a HUGE whiteboard, with rotating responsibilities and costs. The kitchen was huge, so the whiteboard was centrally located in the kitchen. When something did come up, they held a meeting that could accommodate everyone’s schedule. It worked because the “main” tenants were extremely organized (including my dd) and considerate of each other’s needs. Five of the seven, graduated this year. A current tenant is a grad student and another is subleasing dd’s room.
Try the RoomSync Facebook app. There are over 2300 people on the UC Davis section and lot of them will probably already have roommates by this point, but there are still people looking and it’s worth a try!
I did! Unfortunately, I think, unless you pay you cant really use it properly. I guess I’ll take everyones advice and try my luck with a random roommate.
Live no off campus when you’re coming from abroad is a terrible idea. Better make friends and plan for sophomore year but first year should be on campus to give youvtime to adjust to the new culture, lifestyle, laws, etc.
@MindCastle15 you actually get to use it for free if you go from the link on the official Class of 2020 Facebook group. It might take a little digging to find that though since it’s not pinned anymore. The cool thing is, even if you don’t find a roommate, you get to see who quite a few of your potential classmates are.
If you want to go random though, you might get lucky!
I agree with @MYOS1634. Finding off-campus housing, as an incoming freshman is not a good idea. You will be missing all of the dorm activities that are designed for getting to know the people around you, as well as having an RA who can help you adjust to the Davis campus. People in the dorms keep their doors open and friends walk in and out to “chill” with people. Just because my dd didn’t do things with her roommates, in her freshman year, doesn’t mean she didn’t establish other relationships with people on her floor. That’s how she found her future roommates.
Here’s my question: Are you hoping that, by finding a compatible roommate off-campus, you will automatically be supplied with a friend who will do things with you? The chances of that happening are minimal.
Most of the off-campus housing is made up of sophomores, juniors and seniors, who either have their routines established (upper classmen), with work and daily schedules, or are too busy in their major to entertain and orient a freshman. You need to grocery shop and make your own meals. How far will you need to bike to get to the store? They do have a rainy season and it is not fun to bike in the rain. If you have to take the bus, does it go by your complex? In other words, you are going to miss out on a lot of activities on campus and will have a very hard year trying to do everything on your own (transportation, meals, studying).
The off-campus students generally start seeking their rooms in the Spring. Then before they leave for the summer, they sign their contracts with the facilities. A room off-campus, at this point, will be something that fell through with someone else. You won’t get a good selection of size, or rent payment.
I don’t know how you’ve let it lapse so late to get housing. There was a deadline with on-campus housing. Off-campus housing, that is near the university, is probably long gone or very expensive.
Another benefit of living in the dorms first year: You have a chance to explore town a bit and know which areas you’d potentially like to live in. Some people don’t care one way or the other, but others strongly prefer a particular area of town if they can get housing there. And you won’t know unless you actually explore the town a bit.
Something else I’ve noticed with freshmen: They don’t tend to know their own living habits. Most of them have been living in a situation where there was someone to tell them to do the dishes, clean their room, take out the trash, etc. You don’t truly know how you’d handle day-to-day housekeeping type tasks that are crucial to making a living situation work, unless you’ve lived without someone reminding you to do those things. By the time most people are off-campus they know their own habits and can advise their roommates or actively work on improving.
Oh yeah that’s another point, there’s more housekeeping to do in an apartment compared to the dorms. In the dorms you just need to worry about your area of the room. In apartments, you need to worry about coordinating how housekeeping in the communal areas is done. To some extent you have to do this in Cuarto too because of the suite layout, but at least there you don’t need to worry about a kitchen or the bathrooms (cleaning staff comes by for that). And you don’t need to worry about figuring out whose name is on the bills and making sure you pay each person for your portion of bills.
Being in the dorms lets you focus on getting used to the school and forming friendships without having to worry about other aspects of living on your own. I would take advantage of that if you could.
@fennec38 :Could you please post the link to the 2020 group? Somehow, I can’t find it- the only one I can find feels like the wrong group (has class of 2018 stuff in it?).
The only reason I was thinking of off-campus at all was because of the costs- otherwise I would be perfectly happy in a dorm! And I’d already applied for on-campus housing- this June 30th was the last date to get the $500 deposit back if I no longer wanted to live on campus.