Hi everyone!
My name's Lucy and I'm also c/o 2013 - Chicago track! We should all get together during the summer sometime so that we can party before classes start and meet each other in person.
I attended undergrad here and so to answer people's questions about housing:
If you want to live on-campus:
Most students live at SSR. The good things I've heard from my med school friends about living here is that it's super close and you might be living next door to someone who's also a med student - study buddy! The bad thing is that it's on-campus housing. You'll have to deal with front desk security - showing your i-card/keys, etc. If you have friends come over who don't live there, you'll have to go to the bottom floor to sign/escort them in. It's a pretty big hassle.
As other people have said, DON'T live in the Med District apartments - they have horrible management - if something breaks, you won't be able to find anyone to fix it and everyone hates it there.
As far as off-campus housing:
If you're looking for somewhere to live starting June 1 - it's good to start looking now, but more apartments will open up at the end of April and the beginning of May. The off-campus site is VERY helpful though, and so is craigslist.
http://www.housing.uic.edu/offcampus/ (FYI: for some reason, the website likes iexplorer and doesn't always work with Firefox.)
There's also real estate agencies - Such as NWR, C. Gallucci, Carana Properties - these have office located between the uic east and west campuses so they have a lot of apartment listings available in the area.
Personally, I'm going to continue to live off-campus (somewhere around Little Italy) because I hated dealing with on-campus housing. Also, it's sooo much cheaper - you save so much money by not getting the meal plan and if you room with others, rent is by far cheaper as well. Also, I'm planning on getting a dog (yay!!!) - but that's probably not a factor for most people.
I'd suggest living close - at most a 20 minute commute, because 1) I love sleep 2) I hate having to wait in the winter for a bus when I could just walk home. However, the further you get from campus, the cheaper rent will be.
As far as the tri-taylor area, it's alright - it's still Chicago though, so it's best to always be on guard and not walk around alone at night. Anything east of Damen and north of Roosevelt is safest. I'd say that living close to east campus is also safer, since there's campus police patroling the area
Useful tool:
CTA BUS TRACKER! That way you don't have to stand outside too long
http://www.ctabustracker.com/bustime/home.jsp
If you live around campus, the most useful buses would be the 7, 8, 12, 38 and 60. UIC also has a campus shuttle system and Red Car (you call them up to go from one UIC building to the other when it's late).
I'm also interested in this area. I saw a decent priced place on 708 S Claremont Ave...
Can anyone say anything about this area?
Thanks
The place on Claremont seems to be decent - it's close to Harrison which is pretty safe. I haven't really been to that area much though, so someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Hope that helps!