How to choose accommodation 🏠

As of this week, applications for on-campus accommodation for first year undergraduates and postgraduates are open! I thought it would be the perfect time to discuss some of my experiences living in halls during my first year at University and things I think you should consider when you apply for your accommodation over the coming weeks.

My experience in Lakeside

During my first year I lived in Lakeside, an en-suite accommodation for 596 students at Warwick. If you are looking for en-suite accommodation at Warwick I think it’s a fantastic choice. Lakeside is about a 10 minute walk from the centre of campus but one of the closest accommodations to the sports centre at Warwick.

Being a little further out, you’ll find that these rooms may be a little more reasonable than en-suite rooms closer to central campus. I really enjoyed walking home to my room after a long day at uni, a little walk helped me leave the hustle and bustle of uni behind and helped me relax in the evenings. Lakeside is surrounded by beautiful lakes and greenery. It’s the perfect location to relax outside in the summer and a great location to start a long walk when you need a break. It is also surrounded by a serious number of geese, so if geese are not your thing then you might want to consider a different accommodation setting. That being said, seeing all the little goslings running around Lakeside in Term 3 made up for their honking alarm clock some mornings.

How do I choose?

If you’re currently weighing up your options for accommodation for next year here are some things I think you should consider:

How close do you want to be to Uni? There are some accommodations which are a mere minute walk from some lecture halls on campus. These are great if you want to rush to your lectures in the morning or head back for an hour break between seminars. These can be more expensive though, and looking back I preferred living further out and separating my home from my work.

Do you want en-suite accommodation? My accommodation was en-suite and I really enjoyed having my own space. At the same time, shared bathroom accommodations are cleaned very regularly (more regularly than a private bathroom would be cleaned) and are well looked after. A lot of my friends lived in shared bathroom halls and never had any problems, it also really helps reduce the cost of your accommodation. The number of people you share a bathroom is varies by hall, so if you only want to share a bathroom with a small number of flatmates then that can still be possible.

How social do you want your halls to be? I don’t really think it makes sense to rank accommodation by how social your flat will be, but often Rootes is regarded as the social accommodation and halls further out like Lakeside and Heronbank are regarded as quieter. However, note that this isn’t always the case.

How many people do you want to live with? In Lakeside kitchens are often shared by eight people whilst flats in other halls can be shared with more or less. When I first came to uni I expected a flat of eight to be a lot of people however, looking back, it never felt like many people. Since first year I have always lived with eight people. At university I think eight is a good number because rarely will all of you be together. In the evenings lots of people want to go out to different society events or socials and so living with more people helps ensure that someone else will hopefully be in when you want to spend time with your flatmates.

Good luck and feel free to leave a comment or message me on OurWarwick if you would like any more advice!