Finding Housing On-Campus by Claudia-Francisca Lopez Camara

One of the first questions when moving to UCI is related to accommodation. UC Irvine campus offers housing on-campus, for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as for staff and other affiliates to UCI. You can check UCI housing website for more detailed information and options depending on your entrance status: https://housing.uci.edu/

Application for 2018-2019 housing is open since March 1 2018. For applying to housing on-campus, follow the instructions here: https://housing.uci.edu/apply/How_To_Apply.html#newgrads

For new graduate students, you should know that if you got admitted into a PhD program at UCI, you can ask for guaranteed housing on-campus (which means that every year you will have a guaranteed renewal of your lease until the official length of your program or until you do not want to renew anymore, whatever comes first). For master students, there is no guaranteed housing, but you can still apply for housing on-campus.

Rent varies depending on the unit, based on square feet, tenants, furnished/unfurnished and how old the building is and if they have other community utilities like swimming pool or jacuzzi. Usually, Verano Place and Palo Verde accommodations are the cheapest options on-campus since they are not furnished, and they do not have swimming pool, jacuzzi or gym. Personally, depending on the length of your program, I would highly recommend looking for accommodation at Verano Place or Palo Verde, because the difference on the price is remarkable and you will have the pay-back for the furniture in a couple of months. Plus graduate students have the Anteater Recreation Center (gym with swimming pool) included in the tuition and fees. You can check with your program to confirm your ability to access The ARC.

Other things to take into consideration when signing the contract are: 1) to check if your utilities are included or not in the rent (that also varies depending on the community you live and how old is the building) and 2) to check if you have included in your rent a parking spot at your community (in case you want to have a car).

From my experience, I would highly recommend you to stay on-campus rather than off-campus, since it will be cheaper, especially if you want a single room for yourself. In case there is no availability, you can always put your name in the waiting list of the housing office of the community that you are interested to live and look for a sub-lease or lease somewhere else while waiting.

Depending from where you are from, you might not be used to subleases. You should know that subleases are very common at UCI. If you find someone that wants to sublease their apartment or room on-campus to you, you should also know that there is an official procedure that you can follow with the housing office of the community you want to sublease with in order to have an official subleasing contract during those subleasing months. There are a couple Facebook pages that might help you finding a lease or sub-lease:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/424352030950046/ (UCI Housing – posts from students)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/819907344763028/  (University of California, Irvine (UCI) Housing, Sublets & Roommates – posts from students)

 

Claudia-Francisca Lopez Camara Home Country: Spain The Henry Samueli School of Engineering Environmental Engineering, Ph.D.