“The students are coming back!”
You know summer around here has officially ended when this phrase starts getting used more and more around the Charlottesville area as the city prepares itself once again for the latest round of UVa students for the new school year ahead.
Opening Day is this coming weekend – starting Friday, Aug. 21 – and the neighborhoods in and right around UVA will be awash with moving trucks, excited students and anxious parents. Classes are set to beginWednesday, August 25.
Incoming First Year Undergraduates
According to their website, the University of Virginia requires all incoming First Year Undergraduate students to live on-Grounds.
“First Year” refers to students who have finished high school and are entering their first year of college. This does not include Transfer or Graduate students. If you’re married, a single parent, or a non-traditionally aged student, you may qualify for consideration to live off-Grounds.
First Year students may apply to live in one of the three residential college programs, or they may live in the First Year Program. They pay the same rate regardless of which residence area they live in or whether they are assigned to a single, double or triple room.
Returning Undergraduates
UVa offers a number of different residence styles and locations for upperclass students. Apartments, traditional hallway-style bedrooms, residential colleges, and language houses provide a wide variety of experiences for student living. Students in their final undergraduate year may also apply to live on the historic Lawn at the heart of Jefferson’s original university. Other returning students take advantage of rentals near the UVA grounds.
More and more parents are purchasing a condo or townhouse as a sound investment for the remaining three years of undergraduate college life and will hang onto it if they wish to return to Charlottesville for grad school or special events ranging from football, soccer, baseball games to concerts at John Paul Jones Arena and the Pavilion and Paramount Theatre Downtown.
Graduate Housing
UVa offers various housing options for graduate students who are single, married, and/or with families. Individuals living with students in family housing must be their financial dependents.
Graduate Housing provides the convenience of on-Grounds living in an active, safe and friendly community. They’re conveniently located on the University Transit Service and Charlottesville Area Transit bus lines.
Options for single and married graduate students, including those with families, are:
• University Gardens: located on Emmet Street and offers furnished and unfurnished, one- and two-bedroom apartments. It’s an eight-building complex north of UVa. Each apartment is furnished with a refrigerator and stove.
• Copeley Hill: a larger version of University Gardens it offers one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, both furnished and unfurnished. These apartments are in close walking distance to the Law and Darden Schools.
* Single graduate students may also apply to live on The Range, Thomas Jefferson’s original design for the Academical Village. This housing area is located at the center of Grounds and offers one-bedroom, furnished rooms.
UVa has an Off-Grounds Housing Office, which can assist graduate students with researching and selecting off-Grounds housing, as well as providing information on leasing issues and tenant/landlord conflicts.
Housing at the Law School & Darden
Although UVa provides some graduate housing, space is limited and many Law School students choose to live off-Grounds. They’ve partnered with a vendor to establish a special site for Law & Darden Off-Grounds Housing (www.law.virginia.edu/
Monticello Avenue, a Charlottesville-area community website, has a list of links to realtors, apartments, housing organizations and more. You can also check out classifieds at Craigslist, the Daily Progress and C-ville Weekly.
Enrolling students are urged to make living accommodations well in advance of their arrival at the University. For single students, University accommodations are available in the Range in Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village.
