Accommodation experiences

This week I went off to move my little sister (who isn’t really so little any more) into her new student house. She will be going into the second year of her Veterinary Medicine degree at the University of Liverpool and so has made the transition from uni halls into a shared student house. As far as they go, her new little house was quite decent, especially considering the cost. In keeping with this theme, I thought I would share my personal experiences of accommodation in Leicester.

As is typical, my first year was spent in halls where I stayed in the Oadby Student Village. I could rave all day about my time in Oadby; I loved living there. The accommodation is where I met the majority of my closest friends and it is such a sociable environment, giving students the chance to mix with people who aren’t necessarily on the same course. There is both catered and self-catered accommodation available for students, with a range of accommodation types on offer. I was in the cheapest available, which was self-catered with a shared bathroom and kitchen. All of the halls are same-sex, so the bathrooms are never mixed (which was preferable for me!). I shared with four other girls, two English and two international students (from France and Hong Kong), which was assigned at random. Room size is also generally luck of the draw and I just happened to get a monster of a room (I could have comfortably housed a family of five on my bedroom floor). The Oadby gym is also a five minute walk away and the facilities there are great. Obviously I am speaking from a personal experience, but as far as I’m aware generally everyone who has lived in the student village will highly recommend it to prospective students. Some students are put off by the distance from campus, but I walked every day and got on fine strolling past the beautiful houses in the area. There is also the option of getting a bus pass which the majority of students tend to invest in.

In second year I moved into a 3-bedroom house in the Clarendon Park area. This is typically where second and third year students live and it is much closer to campus as it is just the other side of Victoria Park. If I could offer any advice to students ready to find a house for second year, it would be NOT TO RUSH. Everyone seems to think if they don’t sort a house before Christmas there will be none left. This is a vicious rumour and causes people to rush into the important decision of who to live with, causing problems further down the line when freshers is over and friendship groups have shifted. It wasn’t until March that we sorted out our house for second year and there were still plenty left.

Now I am due to return to Leicester in September following a year living in Germany (post to follow on this!), I am getting ready to move into another house in Clarendon Park. I will again be living in a 3-bedroom house, this time with two friends who have also just returned from a year abroad. None of us have actually seen the house as we were all away last year, so we sent a friend to view the property and give us the thumbs up. It was relatively easy for us to sort out all of the paperwork whilst away as it was possible for us to do it all electronically. So fingers crossed the new house is alright and makes a nice base for us all during the ups and downs of our final year.

So that’s my personal experiences of accommodation in Leicester. Speaking to friends at other universities I have typically found that Leicester is considerably cheaper for student accommodation in comparison to other university cities. Of course this depends on personal living preference but if you don’t mind living without the finer things in life, you can save a lot of money living in Leicester compared to other cities.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions on accommodation at Leicester or anything I’ve mentioned (or haven’t mentioned) in this post and I will try to answer promptly!

Daisy x