Hey everyone. So my plan for housing next year fell through last night, so the past 12 hours I have been beyond stressed out. I’m posting this because I’m curious whether housing is just really really terrible at Cornell or for all students everywhere.
Does your school guarantee housing all four years? Do a lot of students live off-campus? When do they sign leases? How much does an apartment by your school cost?
At Cornell, housing is NOT guaranteed all four years (it’s guaranteed freshman year and if you sign up for the housing lottery sophomore year). A lot of students live off-campus since there’s barely enough on-campus housing for half the students. Leases are usually signed in august/first week of September for the following year (i.e. most people have already signed leases for the '16-'17 school year). All the apartments I can find are beyond expensive. Some are almost $2000 a month. Who can afford that???
Anyway. I hope you guys are having a lot more luck with housing than I am right now.
I believe most leases were signed in september, some in october, and by november you’re at slim pickings. In other words, current juniors looking to live off campus in 2016-2017 will sign leases this fall and move in on june 1st.
When my friends were living off campus in 08-09, I believe the super close apartments were in the 700-800 range per person in a 2 or 3 BR. As you got further it would quickly drop down to 400-500 per person.
How are you looking? Are you just craigslisting? In Providence, the apartments that were pretty much exclusively rented by students each year were often found not via craigslist but through the Off-Campus Housing Service at Brown. Basically it was a private craigslist for off campus apartments run by Brown and visible only to Brown. These apartments wouldn’t be listed anywhere else. I imagine Cornell has something similar.
@iwannabe_Brown I’m going through real estate agencies in Ithaca. I can find a couple 2 bedrooms for just over $800 but it seems like the landlords here are just really taking advantage of the students since they know we need housing and have no other options.
@HRSMom No, I’m a rising junior (current sophomore) and the lottery is mainly for rising sophomores (current freshmen). I had applied to live in a house for a club I’m in where housing is done by application and was told I was almost guaranteed a spot, but last night I was informed that more people applied than expected and I wasn’t given a spot. I didn’t want to sign a lease somewhere else because I had felt pretty secure that I had a room in this house for next year, and by now most people have signed leases.
Wow. That stinks! I would stick to the housing office for roommates? It may be you can get a share easier there. I did not know housing was so bad there!
Does Cornell offer any sort of assistance for off campus living? Like I said, most of the apartments my friends lived in were listed by the landlords themselves directly to Brown’s housing office for students to browse.
Probably most colleges do not have enough housing for all undergraduates; the more residential ones mostly have housing for some or all frosh, with most other resident students living in nearby off-campus housing. Many colleges are commuter-heavy, so many or most of their students are not seeking space in on-campus dorms. Even at more residential colleges, many students prefer to move to nearby off-campus housing in later years.
College entries at http://www.collegedata.com or colleges’ Common Data Sets do usually list the percentage of frosh and all students living in on-campus dorms. The percentage of frosh living in the on-campus dorms is probably a decent proxy for resident (as opposed to commuter) students.
At a big state school like mine, I would say a solid 95% of students live off campus after their first year. First year on campus is required for those who don’t have parents in town.
There are actually some apartments closer than some of the dorm buildings here, go figure.
I lived on campus my first year and really didn’t care for it. I could not do that single bed. I had to sleep on the floor/couch sometimes. I would either A. Fall out or B. Have back pain. Could never sleep more than 8 hours even when I was sick and heavily tranquilized. I put every manner of pad/foam/boards on that thing and it was still terrible.
I was in a suite, but to me a dorm was still a prison. I didn’t like having people in positions of power over me.
I didn’t like the dining hall either. Roundtrip walk + eating, it was a solid hour. I did not like having to go outside to get food.
Living off campus is much nicer. Full kitchen is pretty awesome. I also like being farther away from campus. Makes me feel like my whole life isn’t school. I like being able to drive around more too. It was a hassle to get from dorm to parking deck.
I’m not sure if on campus housing is guaranteed for all four years, but it really doesn’t matter. Virtually everyone who applies to live in the dorms gets a spot.
That being said, the overwhelming majority of upperclassmen choose to live either off campus or in the effectively off campus university owned apartments.
Since the housing market at my school is effectively over-saturated, almost no one signs for an off campus place until the middle to end of the second semester. Many don’t sign until less than a month before school starts, and it’s not an issue. Students who will only be at the university for one semester typically sublet a room via a Facebook group or Craigslist. In many ways, it’s a buyer’s market.
Prices per room range from about $350 to about $960 per month. The lower end price is with utilities included in a non luxury place. The upper end is typically for a luxury one bedroom, fully furnished, with utilities included.
Actual on campus housing is only guaranteed first year here. There are some dorms available for sophomores, but that only accounts for a couple hundred students at most when there’s around 5,000 students in each class. Sophomores do have the option of going through student housing to rent out student housing apartments off campus, but those are about three times as expensive as if you went through the apartment complex on your own.
Pretty much everyone lives off campus after first year, unless they’re an RA or one of the couple hundred sophomores still in the dorms. Even if there were room in the dorms for everyone, the fact that an apartment costs significantly less than the dorms encourages people to live off campus.
Leases are usually signed in February, and by mid March most of the good places are already signed for. You can still find something up until shortly before fall quarter starts, but at that point you usually have to sign on to someone else’s lease to get into a decent place, or hope that someone drops their lease at the last minute.
Depends on what you mean by “near” the school. Actually a couple streets away from campus, we were looking at $950-$1100/month for a one bed/one bath a couple years ago. My current apartment is about 1.5 miles away from campus (which really isn’t far at all but people who live across the street from campus like to exaggerate) and is $1400/month for a 2 bed/2 bath. My complex pays for water, while residents pay for all other utilities.
I have never been happier to be in my honors college than when the rest of the school was running around freaking out about the housing lottery. Guaranteed housing for the win!
I have no idea if housing is guaranteed all 4 years at my school, but upperclassmen get first dibs so as long as you sign up the deadline you shouldn’t have a problem getting on campus housing.
However, about a quarter of the freshmen and 90% of upperclassmen choose to live off campus. It’s significantly cheaper (last year I paid $5730 for the dorm for 9 months, this year I pay $2250 in rent for 12 months), and its much nicer too. As someone else mentioned, living off campus means you have a full kitchen, bathroom, and a bigger bedroom (and it’s all yours, no roommate). I’m within walking distance of campus (15 min walk) and right along the bus route. I have a guaranteed parking spot right outside my front door. I don’t have to deal with loud hallmates.
Off campus housing is the best. I’m so glad I decided to leave the dorms.
I signed my lease in April last year. If you want into one of the more popular complexes you’d have to sign by March, but you can find plenty of decent places up until August when school starts. Rent usually runs from $300 (in a decent place outside walking distance from campus with roommates) to $900 (nice place with amenities close to campus).
The key to keeping rent down in an off campus place is to get a 3-4 bedroom place with a few roommates rather than a studio/1-2 bedroom place by yourself.
I attended UC Davis, and there they kick everyone out of the dorms after freshman year to make room for the new incoming freshmen. Upperclassmen are expected to live in student housing or to find their own apartments to live in off-campus
^ At UC Davis, there are apartment complexes around town that have an agreement with student housing to reserve some apartments for people that are signing through student housing. You can either go through student housing or through the apartment complex itself if you want to live at any of those complexes. The dorms only have room for freshmen and sometimes a couple hundred sophomores each year, and anyone else who wanted to go through student housing gets assigned to one of the apartment complexes that they have an agreement with. I believe you can also go to student housing and specify which of those complexes you want to be placed in, but I’m not sure how that works.
Basically with the student housing apartments, you pay dorm prices for an apartment that would cost a fraction of the price of a dorm if you were to go through the actual complex. Most people (who research the prices, anyway) go through the actual apartment complexes for this reason unless they have no other options.