I could not be happier about my living situation. I was so stressed about finding housing and everyone in my life kept telling me it would all work out, and then it all worked out. I am living off-campus near Porter Square (one T stop/a 20 minute walk from campus) with two women who are also at HGSE. We live in a three-bedroom apartment that my roommates found on Craigslist.
My original plan was to show up in Cambridge August 1 and search for a place I could move into September 1. Mid-July I figured I’d start poking around online. I started by creating a profile on the Harvard Housing website. After I made my profile, I looked around the site a little and saw that someone was looking for a roommate in Porter Square. She had already teamed up with another incoming student, they had apartment-hunted, and they just needed a third person on their lease. I FaceTimed with them a couple times and got a virtual tour of the place. We all agreed I’d be a good match for their team, and the three of us signed the lease digitally at the end of July. We moved in August 1. If you can swing it financially/schedule-wise, I recommend an August 1 move-in. It was SO nice to already be settled in by the time orientation started and to not have to move into a new apartment the day before classes began.
I love living off campus. It makes it feel like I have my own individual life that is not 100% wrapped up in Harvard, but I can also meet a friend on campus last-minute or get myself to an evening event without much trouble. Also, one of my very best friends in my program lives a block away, so we often walk to and from campus together and that has helped our friendship develop. It’s been so great!
I would recommend starting to look at Harvard’s housing website and at Craigslist a while before you think you need to. I got lucky that one of my roommates was already living in the Boston area and could easily apartment hunt, but even if she had not been around, it still would have been nice to have found each other online and have a crew to apartment-hunt with.
Author: Delanie Honda, International Education Policy Master’s Student
I am living off campus in a one-bedroom apartment building in Arlington. It is about a 20 minute bus ride northwest of Cambridge and drops me off right in Harvard Square. I am living there with my boyfriend who works non-standard work hours from home, so that is the main reason we decided to rent our own apartment instead trying to rent a room in a shared house.
We began apartment hunting using apartment listing websites and Facebook groups. We began searching shortly after I was accepted into the master’s program since I planned to move to Boston during the summer. We were out of the country and unable to visit apartments in person which made the process a little difficult. To help get a better sense of the apartments we were considering, we asked realtors to do a video call to show us possible locations. I personally was a little nervous having heard about bad experiences with realtors or landlords in the Boston area, but we haven’t run into any issues.
Sometimes I do wish I lived closer to campus because I would be much closer for speakers and other events. Even though I live only a few miles away, on bad days traffic can make the commute much longer. However, I’ve learned to utilize the commute to do readings or catch up on news. I like the location because I’m across the street from a bike/walk trail and it’s close to the public library which gives me an alternative to always studying on campus. Arlington wasn’t on my radar when I first started apartment searching but it’s a nice community here and generally quite convenient so you may consider looking around here if you plan to live off campus.
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