Hi everyone! In this post I’ll be writing about what it’s like living off-campus as a Tufts student. While all first-years and sophomores are required to live on campus, many upperclassmen move off-campus, slowly climbing their way to the inevitable: true adulthood. Just kidding. Acquiring an apartment and living off campus may sound intimidating and a bit scary, but I can assure you it’s a fun experience; if you’re lucky, maybe it will even entail dinner parties, late movie nights with friends, and hopefully a little bit of privacy.
To start, I’ll tell you about the process of finding housing. Coming to Tufts as a transfer student, I immediately started the off-campus housing search process. While I was initially slightly apprehensive about the process, knowing no one at Tufts, it was simple. First, I took advantage of the transfer student Facebook group the undergraduate transfer admissions team put together; I joined the group and immediately began reaching out to other new Tufts students! From there, I quickly formed a group of four transfer students, and we searched for available housing through Tufts’s off-campus housing website.
The Tufts off-campus housing site organizes all the available apartments in the area into one database, making it easy to see each apartment’s location in relation to campus. The website even has a place to directly message the real estate agent or landlord. Additionally, if you are searching for another roommate to fill an apartment, you can find one through the site. It’s as simple as creating a roommate profile with what you are looking for in a roommate and posting your advertisement. While I did not need to search for roommates through this site before my first year at Tufts, I used the site to help my roommates acquire summer sublettors.
Okay, now back to my experience finding housing: after searching through available housing with my three new roommates, we finally found an apartment on College Ave., across the street from the football field. Not only was the apartment a short walk to campus, but it had two full bathrooms (which was a huge bonus). At the sight of the reasonable rent and “2” next to “baths”, we reached out to the landlord. The process was that simple.
Now, let’s talk about some of the perks of living in my off-campus apartment. To start, it is so close to campus that it feels as though it’s on-campus. Last year, my walk to my chemistry lecture every Tuesday and Thursday was three minutes. Additionally, I had my own room. I know by this point you are probably familiar with sharing your room, but let’s be real…it can be difficult finding peace and quiet when you have a roommate who always seems to be in the room – no matter what time of day it is. Living off-campus, you’ll most likely have your own room that you can decorate however you’d like, where you can make calls to your home at any time of the day, and where you can do your homework uninterrupted.
Aside from having your own space, living off-campus provides you with a perfect space to host, whether you are hosting a dinner party, your best friend’s musical-themed birthday, or a watch party. While I have been to many social gatherings in Tufts’s on-campus suites during my sophomore year, there is something unique about hosting dinner parties in an apartment as a college student. Maybe it’s the feeling of reaching true adulthood, or maybe it’s the freedom of having an entire apartment where you can gather with the people who make this community so special.
Overall, living off-campus has been a highlight of my Tufts experience. Not only has it allowed me to host friends and have a little extra privacy, but the close proximity to Davis Square and the Medford/Tufts Green Line stop makes Boston even more accessible. While finding housing may seem daunting at first, Tufts provides many resources to make the process manageable. Whether I am hosting friends for dinner, watching the Homecoming football game from my porch, or enjoying a little extra privacy, living off-campus has been a positive experience for me during my time at Tufts.