Uni Accommodation...

[Buffman]

You'll end up living with your girlfriend in the first year, spending all your time with her and not making any friends.

For some reason you'll split up part way through the second year and you'll feel absolutely **** because you're away from home with no friends and you're living in a flat you can't afford any more because she was paying half.

Just sayin.

Id heed this advice

 

[AJK]

Halls is 'special' in the same way that living with a random group of good/bad nobodies is 'special'.

Go with GF into new flat = choose your randoms and improve status with GF
Go into Halls = distance GF and want to kill Marco on the 2nd floor who thinks he can play guitar at 2am in the morning while eating your food and ****ing your girlfriend.

Close one.

edit : have any of the previous posters actually lived in Halls ever or for more than the first year? Yeah, thought not.

Wow, you're a really positive person.

I lived in halls for 1 year and then shared housing (with friends made from halls (shock horror!) most of whom I'm still good friends with now). Nobody is suggesting living in halls for your entire Uni life but for first year it makes sense - friends, experiences, socialising, etc.

 

[spicypixel]

Judging by the first line of the OP I'd guess it isn't

lolmassive failure on my part.

I vote for flats, I did it.
If its nearer to town it just means when you get sloshed on a night out theres less walk home.

 

[ViperZS]

well, i would go for halls, you're going to meet a lot more people that way, and its a great experience.

What halls have you looked at? I would have thought the new block on the new campus would be good!?

Also, where is the flat?

Halls all the way. Not going to halls would be a gargantuan error.

And I really hope you haven't picked York because your girlfriend is going there.

Even if he has it wont matter, York is a damn good uni!

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Wow, you're a really positive person.

I lived in halls for 1 year and then shared housing (with friends made from halls (shock horror!) most of whom I'm still good friends with now). Nobody is suggesting living in halls for your entire Uni life but for first year it makes sense - friends, experiences, socialising, etc.

I am a very positive person; I just disagree that Halls is necessary and the OP must do it.

I spent four years at Edinburgh Uni, none of them in Halls. I spent a fair amount of time with people who did. I'm basing my guidance to the OP on this and yes, of course, I might be wrong.

I'm not though

 

[nydryl]

Go to halls, you have your whole life to move into a nice flat with your girlfriend. You'll only have one opportunity to experience halls.

 

[Nitefly]

Can I ask why? I assume this is if you're changing country or, to a lesser degree, county, and need to make new friends yes?

Not at all. If you don't stay in halls you will make new friends, you will have a good time.

But you will miss out on all spontaneous events - nights out that happen randomly, silly games such as corridor golf / cricket (that rocked ), staying up late doing student things.

With friends or girlfriends, of course big events like dates, nights out, travelling etc is all bedrock of keeping things exciting, but it's actually the chat you have whilst sat around watching tv, slobbing on each other's beds and eating a silly amount of cheese on toast together which really make you bond. You know, trivial 'hanging out'. This just will not happen to the same extent if you are not in halls.

You will miss out.

 

[Nitefly]

Even if he has it wont matter, York is a damn good uni!

Yet not very exciting, so I hear

 

[reiyushin]

Go for the flat, spend the £600 on nights out or other things you like

 

[sigma]

Halls are overrated. Stay with the GF, as long as you make friends at uni you'll be able to spend plenty of time in halls...

 

[bledd]

Imo, the big plus about halls, you're forced to meet new people who are also in the same situation. Within two weeks, you'll have loads of new 'friends' and since everyone is in the same boat, it's a very good way of quickly meeting a lot of people.

If you're with your gf, you may have a great time, but meeting new friends will be tougher..

Plus, as said above, no bills is amazing. Just set aside your rent and forget about it

 

[[TR]SweetSpotOz]

x

 

[semi-pro waster]

I am a very positive person; I just disagree that Halls is necessary and the OP must do it.

I spent four years at Edinburgh Uni, none of them in Halls. I spent a fair amount of time with people who did. I'm basing my guidance to the OP on this and yes, of course, I might be wrong.

I'm not though

It also depends on the type of person you are and where your priorities lie. I found halls to be a great experience for me and they encouraged me to meet more people which I might have been less inclined to do had I stayed at home or even gone into a rented flat. However of the people I know who did stay at home (a relatively small number oddly, the majority in Dundee seem to be foreign to the city) the vast proportion of them didn't appear to have as much in the way of random fun as I did through staying in halls.

It matters less after the first year as you've normally got a sort of friendship group by that point and it's not impossible to make friends and enjoy yourself by staying in a flat rather than halls. I would suggest that it is perhaps slightly less easy as you aren't 'forced' into it as such and you may be more inclined to simply stay at home with your girlfriend.

However my experiences are based on going to university with no real ties and my priorities are of necessity different from anyone elses. My experience is that I wouldn't trade what I've done for the World but that's not to say that doing things another way wouldn't have worked out equally well.

 

[a1ex2001]

I'm probably a bit or an oddity in that I've done it both ways and I would say 100% halls every time.

 

[Beasty]

I go to York Uni every other weekend and stay with my girlfriend, her room is pretty small but she's in an en suite now and in a pretty quiet court (Ainsty, Halifax)

My girlfriend hated halls, her housemates were absolute tools hell bent on getting drunk every night and doing random stuff all the time, once she had to climb over a ****ing desk to get up the stairs to her room, other times matresses. The kitchen was always a horrific mess and they thought it was ok to eat the cake that her mum made her.

Maybe that's what people like about halls, daddy and mummy aren't there and you can act like an absolute jackass as much as you want and spend their money getting drunk whilst blaring music out, but it really was never going to be for her, or me for that matter.

She still lives in halls but as I say in a very quiet court with mostly chinese students and en suite.

It depends what things you enjoy, but if you're anything like us we enjoy getting a pizza or something and just chilling out and watching a film, was pretty tricky with swarms of dickheads everywhere. both outside your window and in the house.

TLDR halls are overrated and maybe even uni. It's all opinion but my 2 cents.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Of course, agreed, semi-pro; the person, circumstances and priorities will shape the choice of what is best. I'm not going to argue that one.

Maybe I should chill out and just remember that Uni is all about doing things that you'll probably only do once. I just wanted to make the counter-point to 'Halls - do it or you're wrong!'

 

[Nexus]

You should go into Halls for your first year.

From my own experience, when I first went back in 2000, you are put into a situation where you are in a flat/corridor/building with a load of people in the same boat. It is slightly weird and awkward at first, but you soon get to know each other very quickly. Fresher's week still sticks out as a brilliant time and I don't even mean just the going and drinking, even some of the stuff we did in Halls was good fun to.

The people you meet in Halls will most likely be friends for the rest of the time you are at Uni and you may even move in somewhere with them the next year, in my case it certainly was.

Now, you are sure to make friends with people on your course also, but from what I saw, the people who came into Uni didn't have quite the same experience. I remember one guy I worked with asking me about it once and he wished he had gone into Halls, rather than staying with his parents.

Another thing I might add, is that in my fourth and final year at Uni, I went back into Halls, as most of my friends were on 3 year courses and had left. That was a totally different experience to my first year, it was worlds apart. Everyone is final year and so very busy with coursework and exams and everyone also has their own set groups of friends already. So nobody wants or really needs to get to know anybody else that they are living with. I chatted to some of them in the kitchen when cooking, but other than that, I didn't know them. Infact, I even had a guy living opposite me that I didn't even know was there!


The final factor, as unpleasant as it may sound, is that most relationships that are going on before Uni end when people go to Uni. I saw a lot of relationships end in the first couple of months, some did string it out for about a year, but even the ones that did all eventually ended them. So as harsh as it sounds, don't go out of your way to live with your girlfriend, you will have a much better time in Halls.

 

["andy"]

id rather have the free 600 notes than live with the idiots i was stuck in halls with again. it had its good times but im not still mates with any of them.

you tend to find better mates on your course or at events you go to. people with the same sort of mindset as you rather than 6 fine art students who stay in bed all week then go home home on a weekend

 

[semi-pro waster]

Of course, agreed, semi-pro; the person, circumstances and priorities will shape the choice of what is best. I'm not going to argue that one.

Maybe I should chill out and just remember that Uni is all about doing things that you'll probably only do once. I just wanted to make the counter-point to 'Halls - do it or you're wrong!'

You're perfectly right on that, halls are not the be-all and end-all of university life so presenting it as an absolute necessity seems like a mistake to me as well. I enjoyed them, others did not, but on this topic I only speak to my experiences as you do with yours c'est la vie.

 

[Klo]

I'm in halls atm and they're ok. A bit overrated in my opinion by all the people who like getting wasted every evening, I don't drink at all so it all gets a bit boring.

For me freshers week was the worst week at uni, I nearly left because of it.