The Roommate Experience: Fill & Download for Free

It depends upon your college’s residential life and its experience, and upon your college itself. If you’re at a college where there aren’t enough dorms, or you’re at a commuter college, then you have to find other housing. For example, UMass Boston doesn’t have dormitories; students who don’t live at home have to find apartments to rent. UMass Amherst has dorms, but because of the party culture on campus, most students move out and rent apartments in Amherst, Hadley, South Deerfield, Sunderland, Northampton. Apartments are very, very expensive, so either their parents are paying their rent, buying the food, etc., and students often have to have several roommates in order to help keep rental costs and living expenses down. The juniors and seniors don’t want to live in the dorms with the freshmen and sophomores. Local students can live at home and commute, but there’s an added expense with parking and having to have a car.At nearby Amherst College and Smith College, there are enough dorms for every student, and those colleges guarantee housing on campus for students. There are fewer town-gown problems because young, immature people aren’t renting apartments and trashing them. Parties and other social events get held on campus, so town police, fire, and emergency officials aren’t dealing with off-campus college students partying and causing problems. Older, non-traditional aged students often live off campus, but they’re more mature, and many are married, so they have their homes, and if they’re renting, they’re paying their own rent rather than mom and dad paying, so they’re often more careful.Some schools don’t permit underclassmen to live off campus.But if you’re at the point where you’ve had it with dorm life, and if you have some potential roommates in mind, then consider getting an apartment for the upcoming school year. Talk it over with your parents, too, as you’ll have some big expenses that you wouldn’t have if you were to remain in the dorms. You’ll need furniture (bed, chair, desk, kitchen table and chairs, etc.), dishes and silverware, cutlery, pots and pans, a microwave for quick and easy reheated meals, a coffee pot/maker, tea kettle, etc. If the apartment isn’t on a bus route or T stop, you’ll need a car, as will your roommates, and then there will be an added expense of parking and costs associated with keeping and maintaining a car. Your landlord will charge you for parking, as will the university.You should also work out any roommate issues—the issues roommates have when sharing a dorm room or suite are different from the issues you will have when sharing an apartment. Who buys the food? Who cooks? Who cleans? Who takes out the trash? What happens when someone eats your food/uses your shampoo/toothpaste and doesn’t replace it or give you money for it? What happens if one of your roommates moves out—can you still afford to rent if you or your parents have to kick in more for the rent and other bills, or if you can’t find another roommate? What about overnight guests? How do you and your roommates feel about strange men (or women) staying over? What about pets? If you’re allergic to cats, and one roommate gets 4 cats, then what? Will you be able to find another apartment or move back into the dorms? What if you’re working and your roommates aren’t, so when you get home to the apartment and want peace and quiet so you can START your homework and study, your roommates want to have other friends over/blast the tv or party?

Well, if you weren’t accepted, all of the following is moot.MIT guarantees housing for all undergraduates for 8 terms. You can apply for a ninth term: Ninth-Term Housing (UG)All MIT freshmen are required to live on campus at a dormitory. Some freshmen can have singles (single-occupancy) e.g., MacGregor, East Campus. Most freshmen have a roommate (or multiple roommates) and roommates definitely enrich your experience.After freshman (i.e., first-) year, students can live at a “Fraternity, Sorority, or Independent Living Group” including off-campus, or they can opt to live at a dormitory. (Some fraternities are on Memorial Drive/Amherst Alley so they are technically “on campus”.)It is possible to live off-campus as an upperclassman. MIT can also assist with that: Off-Campus Housing . It is easiest to obtain off-campus housing in June (when many are moving out of Cambridge/Boston) and most difficult (but not impossible) around September 1st. Some students use the above link or craigslist or work with local rental brokers (i.e., real estate agents that specialize in rentals). Most apartment rentals require a minimum of first-month and last-month of rent. Some will require a “damage deposit” (up to one month, but you will have this returned if you incur no damages OR the landlord must give you receipts and the balance) and if you should use a rental broker, then usually a month “finder’s fee.” (i.e., you need money, up front, and pay your monthly rent on the first of the month)You might ask: How much money is a month’s rent (in Cambridge or Boston)? Well, this is recent information, about 2 weeks old: Here is how much money you could save by moving one T stop awayAs MIT is very cooperative and some of the undergrad experience is social (i.e., you’ll meet many very interesting people around campus or in your dorms), it’s to a student’s benefit to live on campus.

There are tons of things to do if you are rich. Otherwise, I think college is something best left to those who have a clear goal in mind with their education and familiarity with their field. This would be enough of a passion that you would spend most of your time focusing on your topic of interest because you would not be overwhelmed enough to need a break.In my experience being at UMass Amherst for a year, everyone is “busy” or spending time with established friends. It is even more painful that much of the campus is closed off on weekends and are run with operating hours. I used to spend much of my time in the library, much of the time just exploring the building, but I wish I could stay there through the night as my dorm was not a great environment for reading and the library is mostly unoccupied outside of the computer area and it feels very peaceful and mysterious and like a good hiding place. It is nice to go invisible in a place where you also won’t hear others’ activities.It basically sucks if you don’t have a roommate you can relate with or if you find that just fitting in with your dorm building’s community isn’t really possible.