2015-2016 University of Southern California (Keck) Application Thread

Discover Your Odds of Getting into Medical School
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Pretty sure they're done interviewing


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So the new MSAR data has come out, and the numbers simply don't add up financially. On the one hand, the school publishes that 80% of students receive aid. Presumably, aid here means almost exclusively loans, and the occasional recruitment scholarship. After budgeting to find out what the long-term 4 year costs are, on the low end (assuming no scholarships/grants/or other REAL aid that isn't loans), you're looking at 350k+ in loans after 4 years at this school. Compared to the recently published MSAR who puts average graduate indebtedness at FREAKING 184K, down from 219K in the previous edition.

Somebody's lying here. Either Keck is selectively reporting, is misleading with the number of people who take out loans (and a LOT more people have their parents pay their education than they lead on), MSAR has misreported, or there are a lot more scholarships and aid programs that simply aren't listed and people are saying don't exist but actually do. I feel like I/we've somehow been duped.

Does anybody else have more info on this, or could maybe clarify/point out something I've missed?
 
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Apophilius said:
So the new MSAR data has come out, and the numbers simply don't add up financially. On the one hand, the school publishes that 80% of students receive aid. Presumably, aid here means almost exclusively loans, and the occasional recruitment scholarship. After budgeting to find out what the long-term 4 year costs are, on the low end (assuming no scholarships/grants/or other REAL aid that isn't loans), you're looking at 350k+ in loans after 4 years at this school. Compared to the recently published MSAR who puts average graduate indebtedness at FREAKING 184K, down from 219K in the previous edition.

Somebody's lying here. Either Keck is selectively reporting, is misleading with the number of people who take out loans (and a LOT more people have their parents pay their education than they lead on), MSAR has misreported, or there are a lot more scholarships and aid programs that simply aren't listed and people are saying don't exist but actually do. I feel like I/we've somehow been duped.

Does anybody else have more info on this, or could maybe clarify/point out something I've missed?
Click to expand...

Just my two cents. I have two friends who are currently MS1s and they both said that there are quite a few of their classmates are having their parents pay for the entire amount or part of the amount. Additionally there are a ton of scholarships available every year with about 4-10 of them being over 10k. Adding in the half tuition and full tuition scholarships I could easily see how they could get their numbers down. But not that far down! That would make them seem affordable! The estimated cost is also quite generous if you break it down. Heck you slash about 4K per year just by living in Currie hall in a 4BR. Also 3000 for transportation? You'd have to spend nearly 300 dollars a month on car expenses which seems insane especially if you live at Currie. That's roughly 6k out of the bill every year for 4 years. Still way way way too much though.
 
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Alternate list :(. Does USC reject post interview?


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Does anyone know what Keck's grading scheme is? Do they actually have an unranked pass/fail for the pre-clinical years?
 
Did anyone get accepted today?

Alternate list as well :(
 
Meow72 said:
If I remember correctly it's true pass/fail and unranked.
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Pseudo-unranked. Final exams at the end of preclinical years (or maybe just the end of M2, not sure) rank you. But apparently you have the option to publish that rank to residencies when you apply in M4. But really, residencies don't care much about preclinical grades, so it won't make much of a difference.
 
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LordxRequiem said:
Do we know how deep the waitlist is?


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I have no idea. Dr. Arias told us that last year only one applicant got off of the waitlist. But she also mentioned that it changes every year.
 
drwoofs said:
Just my two cents. I have two friends who are currently MS1s and they both said that there are quite a few of their classmates are having their parents pay for the entire amount or part of the amount. Additionally there are a ton of scholarships available every year with about 4-10 of them being over 10k. Adding in the half tuition and full tuition scholarships I could easily see how they could get their numbers down. But not that far down! That would make them seem affordable! The estimated cost is also quite generous if you break it down. Heck you slash about 4K per year just by living in Currie hall in a 4BR. Also 3000 for transportation? You'd have to spend nearly 300 dollars a month on car expenses which seems insane especially if you live at Currie. That's roughly 6k out of the bill every year for 4 years. Still way way way too much though.
Click to expand...

I actually did end up budgeting this with my accountant fiancée, and we did overestimate on certain things. But you end up being about right on par with what they estimate. They're pretty conservative with their budgeting it seems, and my guess is, considering they have one of the highest national graduate indebtedness levels in the nation, they want to keep it that way.

If you actually count for minor cost inflation (~2%), paying electricity in Currie Hall, gas and car insurance payments, and a roughly ~4% increase in tuition every year, you can look at a roughly ~350-390k loan balance after 4 years here counting for accruing interest on loans.

At this point, hopefully PSLF will still be around so you can be grandfathered in before it goes (and it will go one day), or if you go into primary care, pray to whatever Gods that PAYE will still be around.

I plan on dumping every last drop of my residency/early year attending earnings into that debt and piggybacking off the fiancée in the meantime, assuming I get into one of the specialties I'm eyeing.
 
Meow72 said:
I have no idea. Dr. Arias told us that last year only one applicant got off of the waitlist. But she also mentioned that it changes every year.
Click to expand...
Wow I'm so much more hopeful now xD /s


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Apophilius said:
I actually did end up budgeting this with my accountant fiancée, and we did overestimate on certain things. But you end up being about right on par with what they estimate. They're pretty conservative with their budgeting it seems, and my guess is, considering they have one of the highest national graduate indebtedness levels in the nation, they want to keep it that way.

If you actually count for minor cost inflation (~2%), paying electricity in Currie Hall, gas and car insurance payments, and a roughly ~4% increase in tuition every year, you can look at a roughly ~350-390k loan balance after 4 years here counting for accruing interest on loans.

At this point, hopefully PSLF will still be around so you can be grandfathered in before it goes (and it will go one day), or if you go into primary care, pray to whatever Gods that PAYE will still be around.

I plan on dumping every last drop of my residency/early year attending earnings into that debt and piggybacking off the fiancée in the meantime, assuming I get into one of the specialties I'm eyeing.
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im surprised you didn't end up at less especially factoring in the fact that you'll be living with your fiancé. I came out to 25k less around 330. That's also because I'll be living with my significant other and don't need the car or health insurance for the first 2 years. I could see how those will jack the prices up.

I also need to look into PAYE and PSLF...
 
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How do I justify the cost of wanting to attend Keck when cheaper options are available? Convince me please. :(

@Apophilius
 
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Cawolf said:
How do I justify the cost of wanting to attend Keck when cheaper options are available? Convince me please. :(

@Apophilius
Click to expand...

General Advice

Hard to say without looking at what schools they are and what your estimated cost of attendance at those other schools will be, compared with Keck.

But really it depends on what you want to get out of life. If you're thinking about primary care, then any school (in the region you care about) will do. If you want to come back to Cali, you have a home base here already, and it likely won't make a lick of difference what med school you go to around the country if you want to do family practice. If your goal is primary care, go to the cheapest available option.

If you want to go into a competitive specialty, or you want to at least keep that option open, playing safer will make things tougher. Prestige of a school is important for these matters, and will usually be the one deciding factor if a competitive specialty is your goal (because of name recognition and resources such a school has). Keck is quite good. Cali schools have a reputation for toughness of admissions (prestige of a school matters for residencies), and--for out of staters--it gives you a regional boost when applying to Cali residencies if you want to stay here. But Keck isn't the best, and isn't a huge name school like WashU or Baylor. I loved this school when I interviewed, but let's be honest about where it stands.

Keck has some amazing things going for it as far as programs go, though. They have a sure fire way of getting good step scores if you have the work ethic--7 freaking weeks of dedicated step studying, after strict P/F (dat mental health) preclinicals. Mandated research forces you to make your resume look good for competitive specialties. Clinical years have an available county hospital, where you have near-residency level responsibilities over your patient. You get to feel what healthcare is really like faster than 90+% of your colleagues nationally at other schools. And the location is great.

If you found an equally prestigious school at a substantially (~30+k per more long term, the rest will be, at least for me, roughly negligible) lower cost, then YOU have to do a cost/benefit analysis of whether staying close to home is important to you. Nobody else can answer that for you.

Looking at specifics

As far as financial options are concerned, the thing you want to consider is long term wealth aggregation, and this is how you assess cost/benefit. If you go to work at a 501c3 or a federal/state run business, currently there is a (has a shaky future) payment plan through PSLF, or public service loan forgiveness. What you do is you put 10% (more specifically, PAYE values, more on that later) of your earnings toward loan payments for 10 years, and this INCLUDES residency. That's it, then you're done. In this case, the cost of attending school at Keck won't be any different from like 99% of other medical schools. The downside (if you vote red) is the taxpayers will take the hit, and because of this a lot of people (including Obama, who actually proposed the darn thing in the first place) are strongly considering tossing it. My expectation is PSLF will have gone belly up before we reach residency and can qualify, and be potentially grandfathered into the program.

Other alternative is PAYE (pay as you earn), with 10% of your discretionary income going to debt, and maxes out at 10 years of accrued interest. You pay for this, at most, for 25 years, and then you're done. This isn't so bad. Admittedly, if you go into a low paying specialty, after taxes, you won't be making as much when you toss in PAYE, with it not being horribly unlikely you're going to be making under 100k after taxes, but that's still very good.

But to the real meat. Let's say you live the estimated CoL for Keck, and aggregate the expected 368k after 4 years at Keck. This is a roughly 507k 10-year debt, which if you go through PAYE, is the maximum amount you'll ever be expected to pay (let's hope this thing doesn't bust when the student loan bubble does). If you go into residency, with a roughly 40k per year net income, and put 10k away into student debt for 3 years, you'll make a small dent, but it does make a difference. Say you go into family practice, and pull 130k to start (VERY low end). Here you're looking at 90k after taxes. Then you just make the regular PAYE payments, with 10 percent of your discretionary income, or about 12k in LA, for the next 22 years of your life (3 years residency already deducted). So really you'll be pulling 78k after taxes. This is a near-zero debt forgiveness, so the taxpayer doesn't take a hit.

If PSLF is still a thing, that will be HUGE. Because then you stop making payments after just 7 years of being an attending. You'll have payed only 144k (with an even larger debt forgiveness, hence the Reps wanting to toss it), and you'll be making 90 again before you hit 40 on the VERY low end of the lowest paying specialty.

You'll be a millionaire still, who can go on ritzy vacations to Europe and drive around a mustang, working a regular 9-5 with very few calls. Admittedly, you'll be waiting a while before you do this.

If you're married at any point (which, hopefully you will be), the cost burden is SIGNIFICANTLY reduced (if you're not marrying a doctor), because you can piggyback off of their earnings and pour your early money into that debt, and have it payed off in under 10 years.

/wall-o-text.
 
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@Apophilius

Amazing post, thank you. I have seen those repayment terms thrown around, but you painted a really clear picture. And @drwoofs and Apophilus, I am coming from CA and my main other option is Iowa. Yearly COA ~ $45k compared to Keck at $90k.
 
Cawolf said:
@Apophilius

Amazing post, thank you. I have seen those repayment terms thrown around, but you painted a really clear picture. And @drwoofs and Apophilus, I am coming from CA and my main other option is Iowa. Yearly COA ~ $45k compared to Keck at $90k.
Click to expand...

You're slicing your debt burden in half at Iowa compared to Keck, Iowa is a little bit lower than Keck is academically and research wise, but if you work hard during med school this is negligible. So, is living in California for four years worth ~250+k for you?
 
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Apophilius said:
General Advice

Hard to say without looking at what schools they are and what your estimated cost of attendance at those other schools will be, compared with Keck.

But really it depends on what you want to get out of life. If you're thinking about primary care, then any school (in the region you care about) will do. If you want to come back to Cali, you have a home base here already, and it likely won't make a lick of difference what med school you go to around the country if you want to do family practice. If your goal is primary care, go to the cheapest available option.

If you want to go into a competitive specialty, or you want to at least keep that option open, playing safer will make things tougher. Prestige of a school is important for these matters, and will usually be the one deciding factor if a competitive specialty is your goal (because of name recognition and resources such a school has). Keck is quite good. Cali schools have a reputation for toughness of admissions (prestige of a school matters for residencies), and--for out of staters--it gives you a regional boost when applying to Cali residencies if you want to stay here. But Keck isn't the best, and isn't a huge name school like WashU or Baylor. I loved this school when I interviewed, but let's be honest about where it stands.

Keck has some amazing things going for it as far as programs go, though. They have a sure fire way of getting good step scores if you have the work ethic--7 freaking weeks of dedicated step studying, after strict P/F (dat mental health) preclinicals. Mandated research forces you to make your resume look good for competitive specialties. Clinical years have an available county hospital, where you have near-residency level responsibilities over your patient. You get to feel what healthcare is really like faster than 90+% of your colleagues nationally at other schools. And the location is great.

If you found an equally prestigious school at a substantially (~30+k per more long term, the rest will be, at least for me, roughly negligible) lower cost, then YOU have to do a cost/benefit analysis of whether staying close to home is important to you. Nobody else can answer that for you.

Looking at specifics

As far as financial options are concerned, the thing you want to consider is long term wealth aggregation, and this is how you assess cost/benefit. If you go to work at a 501c3 or a federal/state run business, currently there is a (has a shaky future) payment plan through PSLF, or public service loan forgiveness. What you do is you put 10% (more specifically, PAYE values, more on that later) of your earnings toward loan payments for 10 years, and this INCLUDES residency. That's it, then you're done. In this case, the cost of attending school at Keck won't be any different from like 99% of other medical schools. The downside (if you vote red) is the taxpayers will take the hit, and because of this a lot of people (including Obama, who actually proposed the darn thing in the first place) are strongly considering tossing it. My expectation is PSLF will have gone belly up before we reach residency and can qualify, and be potentially grandfathered into the program.

Other alternative is PAYE (pay as you earn), with 10% of your discretionary income going to debt, and maxes out at 10 years of accrued interest. You pay for this, at most, for 25 years, and then you're done. This isn't so bad. Admittedly, if you go into a low paying specialty, after taxes, you won't be making as much when you toss in PAYE, with it not being horribly unlikely you're going to be making under 100k after taxes, but that's still very good.

But to the real meat. Let's say you live the estimated CoL for Keck, and aggregate the expected 368k after 4 years at Keck. This is a roughly 507k 10-year debt, which if you go through PAYE, is the maximum amount you'll ever be expected to pay (let's hope this thing doesn't bust when the student loan bubble does). If you go into residency, with a roughly 40k per year net income, and put 10k away into student debt for 3 years, you'll make a small dent, but it does make a difference. Say you go into family practice, and pull 130k to start (VERY low end). Here you're looking at 90k after taxes. Then you just make the regular PAYE payments, with 10 percent of your discretionary income, or about 12k in LA, for the next 22 years of your life (3 years residency already deducted). So really you'll be pulling 78k after taxes. This is a near-zero debt forgiveness, so the taxpayer doesn't take a hit.

If PSLF is still a thing, that will be HUGE. Because then you stop making payments after just 7 years of being an attending. You'll have payed only 144k (with an even larger debt forgiveness, hence the Reps wanting to toss it), and you'll be making 90 again before you hit 40 on the VERY low end of the lowest paying specialty.

You'll be a millionaire still, who can go on ritzy vacations to Europe and drive around a mustang, working a regular 9-5 with very few calls. Admittedly, you'll be waiting a while before you do this.

If you're married at any point (which, hopefully you will be), the cost burden is SIGNIFICANTLY reduced (if you're not marrying a doctor), because you can piggyback off of their earnings and pour your early money into that debt, and have it payed off in under 10 years.

/wall-o-text.
Click to expand...

After reading this I can totally see why everyone says PSLF is going to go. It definitely is. If you just explained that on national television I bet there would be a nationwide uproar hah.

I pray it will be around. It's the only way I'll pay it off in time otherwise I'm looking at 5 years after residency living near poverty level...
 
drwoofs said:
After reading this I can totally see why everyone says PSLF is going to go. It definitely is. If you just explained that on national television I bet there would be a nationwide uproar hah.

I pray it will be around. It's the only way I'll pay it off in time otherwise I'm looking at 5 years after residency living near poverty level...
Click to expand...

If you assume the lowest of the low salaries, then yeah. If you plan on going into something competitive (like what ~1/2 of Keck's class matches into) then you're looking at better salaries down the road, and you can pay it off more quickly. Even if you aren't looking at high paying specialties, if you're planning on spending much longer with your SO (assuming she isn't a med student herself), you two can work together and get it payed off even quicker than that.

Expecting a ~400k loans, my fiancée and I budgeted 3-4 years after residency for the two of us in the worst circumstances.

PSLF isn't definitely going to go. The whole idea is to get physicians going into private practice and other lucrative options back into public health, where they'll be desperately needed. It's one alternative of filling the healthcare shortage besides increasing GME. Specifically, instead of canceling it wholesale, they might cap a 57k loan forgiveness, so you'd be paying ~310k over your life, which is a far cry better than 500-600k. Pray democrats win this election to help keep those numbers low xD.

But yeah, PSLF is the one bastion of hope for people going to expensive medical schools, wanting to do primary care. If America wants physicians in primary care, they either need to force the stop of increasing tuition, or provide benefits to future doctors in some ways.
 
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Apophilius said:
You're slicing your debt burden in half at Iowa compared to Keck, Iowa is a little bit lower than Keck is academically and research wise, but if you work hard during med school this is negligible. So, is living in California for four years worth ~250+k for you?
Click to expand...

It is very hard to say, but I am leaning towards no.
 
LordxRequiem said:
Yes, please withdraw and open up a waitlist spot :D


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Click to expand...

If I knew that was what I wanted, I would do it right away to clear a spot. :(
 
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Cawolf said:
It is very hard to say, but I am leaning towards no.
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As much as I love USC, take the money and run. Do well enough at Iowa and come back to California in 4 years if you really want to. That 250k debt difference is HUGE.
 
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So, still doing my research over here...

Looking over USC's match list, and I see that a full 16 students went into a prelim year. Nearly 1/10th of the class. Anyone know why it's so high?

That many people not match categorical? I've always been told be wary of prelim years...
 
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Apophilius said:
So, still doing my research over here...

Looking over USC's match list, and I see that a full 16 students went into a prelim year. Nearly 1/10th of the class. Anyone know why it's so high?

That many people not match categorical? I've always been told be wary of prelim years...
Click to expand...

Only read my answer if the ratio between matches vs. students in the class that matched is greater than 1:1

As far as my knowledge extends... some specialties have both categorical and advanced positions (according to WashU: urology, ophthalmology, dermatology, diagnostic radiology, radiation oncology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurology, psychiatry and anesthesiology). Those advance positions start at PGY-2 and require a preliminary year. On match lists, the preliminary year match and the advanced position match can be listed separately. So its possible that a good portion of those 16 students also matched into an advanced position that is listed separately on the list.
 
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tartandtangy said:
Only read my answer if the ratio between matches vs. students in the class that matched is greater than 1:1

As far as my knowledge extends... some specialties have both categorical and advanced positions (according to WashU: urology, ophthalmology, dermatology, diagnostic radiology, radiation oncology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurology, psychiatry and anesthesiology). Those advance positions start at PGY-2 and require a preliminary year. On match lists, the preliminary year match and the advanced position match can be listed separately. So its possible that a good portion of those 16 students also matched into an advanced position that is listed separately on the list.
Click to expand...

I think that answer also works if the match list is 1:1. If they list categorical vs advanced/prelim spots differently (e.g. radonc, which this is pretty much a requirement with the all of 7 categorical PGY-1 positions nationally).

But that makes sense.

Edit: Yeah actually. You see this quite often in a variety of fields--people matching into PGY-2 and going prelim/transitional in the meantime.

Hopefully USC doesn't list advanced matches xD.
 
How are USC's residency matching numbers for the class--when I was there for the interview, I vaguely remember the student tour guide saying something along the lines of "every Keck student last year was paired with their number 1 residency choice in the specialty of their choice"...could anyone shed some light on this?
 
Lost_Premed said:
How are USC's residency matching numbers for the class--when I was there for the interview, I vaguely remember the student tour guide saying something along the lines of "every Keck student last year was paired with their number 1 residency choice in the specialty of their choice"...could anyone shed some light on this?
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I dont know much more than you on this, but honestly, that seems extremely unlikely.
 
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Lost_Premed said:
How are USC's residency matching numbers for the class--when I was there for the interview, I vaguely remember the student tour guide saying something along the lines of "every Keck student last year was paired with their number 1 residency choice in the specialty of their choice"...could anyone shed some light on this?
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Pretty good, actually. If you have MSAR you can see a good bit of their match data, but eyeing over Wash U it's roughly on par with them, though a little less competitive (to be expected). https://residency.wustl.edu/Residencies/WUSMMatch/Pages/Home.aspx
 
Is the youSC portal working for anyone else? I can't seem to access anything, and I assume the Enrollment and Housing form is in one of the links I can't access. I'm not sure how they can link my email address to my account seeing that we didn't apply to Keck with the "Apply Yourself" application. Help!
 
ShootforPluto said:
Is the youSC portal working for anyone else? I can't seem to access anything, and I assume the Enrollment and Housing form is in one of the links I can't access. I'm not sure how they can link my email address to my account seeing that we didn't apply to Keck with the "Apply Yourself" application. Help!
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Works fine for me, did you register a new account on there first?
 
Does anyone have an idea when financial aid decisions will be released for Keck?
 
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gyrfalcon said:
Does anyone have an idea when financial aid decisions will be released for Keck?
Click to expand...

Last year it was first reported on 4/22, and similarly the year before.
 
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How deep is the waitlist? No info on MSAR


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LordxRequiem said:
How deep is the waitlist? No info on MSAR


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Click to expand...

Pretty sure no one gets rejected post interview, and out of 500 interviewed ~300 are accepted, so probably 200 deep (going off the post on page 1 of this thread).

The reason the waitlist clears so rarely is that, out of the 300 accepted, they expect 180-190 to matriculate. I guess fewer than 180/300 matriculating isn't common, and so they rarely pull off the waitlist. And when they do, they don't pull off many.
 
Apophilius said:
Pretty sure no one gets rejected post interview, and out of 500 interviewed ~300 are accepted, so probably 200 deep (going off the post on page 1 of this thread).

The reason the waitlist clears so rarely is that, out of the 300 accepted, they expect 180-190 to matriculate. I guess fewer than 180/300 matriculating isn't common, and so they rarely pull off the waitlist. And when they do, they don't pull off many.
Click to expand...
Man that bites. Wonder what went wrong in my interview


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LordxRequiem said:
Man that bites. Wonder what went wrong in my interview


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Click to expand...

I'm convinced that 95%, all interviews are fine and if they could take you, they would. But you gotta narrow that list down any way you can. Do this by wowing them somehow through paper or interview. Some of your interviews can be better or worse than your average, even though all of them are fine. If you are better than average on interview, and one adcom member likes one part of your application (that other admissions committees didn't care for or didn't notice), then that's all it takes to get in.

When you fall in 1 sigma of the bell curve, I'm convinced the rest is just luck, and these applicants are pretty much all equivalent. Some happen to serendipitously look better to some schools than others, and those they look better at are the ones that accept them.
 
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Just received notification of acceptance into the HTE (health, technology, engineering) program. :)
 
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Hi everyone! I was accepted and as April 30 gets closer and closer, I want to make sure I pick the right school for me. I have so many questions about Keck and if any of you can answer any of them, I'd appreciate it so much! :) Here are some of my questions (I'm sorry there are so many).

  1. What exactly is PPM and ICM? I see that on all the schedules. The website also talks about CTR and EBM. What are those also?
  2. How is the curriculum?
  3. How many hours a week do you spend in lectures, small groups, hospitals, studying, lab, etc.?
  4. What made you choose Keck?
  5. How do you apply for scholarships and how good is the financial aid? Are spouses and children included in the budget?
  6. How far do you live from the school? I heard that around USC is kind of dangerous and people told me not to live walking distance from the school? How hard is it to find housing for a reasonable price?
  7. How much time do you have for extracurriculars and other activities?
  8. How does the elective/selective part of med school work?
  9. How much time do you have for friends, family, working out, and fun?
  10. What do you do for fun?
  11. Is there a lot of support from faculty and older classes? Is there a mentor system?
  12. How friendly and helpful are your classmates?
  13. Will we get free parking?
  14. How do you go about starting/doing the required scholarly project?
  15. You might not know this one but how many students match into their first choice residency?
  16. Are you happy at Keck? Are you often stressed? I know med school is stressful but how bad is it?
 
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giraffesuptop said:
Hi everyone, I am a current Keck student. April 30 is quickly approaching and many of you are probably trying to decide which school you will matriculate at. I am happy to answer any questions you have about Keck.

If any of you are already committed to Keck and are looking for housing, I can offer advice on housing in the super expensive, perpetually traffic-jammed LA area:)
Click to expand...

Hi! What's your advice on housing?
 
giraffesuptop said:
Start looking now. LA traffic is terrible so I suggest living within 5 miles of the school (5 miles drive in LA is 15-45+ minutes depending on traffic)

nice areas nearby include Alhambra, South Pasadena, Monterey Hills, and Silver Lake

an apartment complex named City View Terrace is one mile from campus, it's cheap, has good accommodations, and most residents are med/pharm/grad students http://cvtliving.com/

new student housing named Currie Hall is also opening on campus. it looks very nice and is affordable. https://www.americancampus.com/student-apartments/ca/los-angeles/currie-hall
Click to expand...

Interesting I've been looking for housing for August but it seems most things on Craigslist and other sites are looking for more immediate tenants. Any other suggestions on sites or recommended housing?
 
giraffesuptop said:
Hi everyone, I am a current Keck student. April 30 is quickly approaching and many of you are probably trying to decide which school you will matriculate at. I am happy to answer any questions you have about Keck.

If any of you are already committed to Keck and are looking for housing, I can offer advice on housing in the super expensive, perpetually traffic-jammed LA area:)
Click to expand...

So, how close is grocery/knick-knack stores to campus? Signed a Currie lease with the fiancée, and it'd be nice if it doesn't take 40 minutes of driving to get food and school supplies, you know?

Hi from the other thread, btw xD.
 
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magagna said:
@giraffesuptop Thank you for the super informative post!

If not Currie Hall, I was considering living in Pasadena, South Pas, or Highland Park and taking the Gold Line to Union Station. Do many students commute via metro > HSC shuttle? Do you foresee any problems schedule-wise with commuting this way?
Click to expand...

If you're going to do Currie Hall jump on it pretty quick. The "desirable" rooms--the 1B/1B and the most cost efficient options are gone.
 
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