Picking a Residence at Waterloo

[gosensgo101]

I've been accepted to Computer Science at Waterloo, and I would like to choose a residence. Which residences are conveniently located for me and are there any that are good (or atleast more accomodable) for tall people as I'm about 6'2" or 6'3"?

[Euphoracle]

UWP. UWP is winrar. Whatever you do, don't pick V1.

[Brightguy]

Euphoracle @ Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:12 pm wrote:

Whatever you do, don't pick V1.

Strange advice. I would recommend V1 to those who don't want to cook for themselves or don't want a roommate, as V1 consists of mostly single rooms. V1 also wins in terms of location for CS students, since it is the closest residence to the math building: depending on where in V1 you live, the commute from your room door to your class door can be as little as 3 minutes (I timed it).

UWP is a good choice for those who want to cook for themselves or would like an attached suite. They can be similar to single rooms in that if you live with unsocial roommates you might not see them that often.

[jbking]

V1 was good for me back when I was at Waterloo, granted that was ~15 years ago give or take a couple of years. While there are single rooms, there were some cases where someone's room was inbetween another person's room and hallway so there could be incidental traffic. I'm not sure if the "Quiet House" rules are still around or not but there were rules about some houses being known for being quieter than others that you may want to research if that is what you would prefer. As for height differences, I don't know if there is that big a difference around but I am a little shorter than you at about 5'10" tall.

[Euphoracle]

Brightguy @ Tue Apr 27, 2010 2:23 am wrote:

Euphoracle @ Mon Apr 26, 2010 10:12 pm wrote:

Whatever you do, don't pick V1.

Strange advice. I would recommend V1 to those who don't want to cook for themselves or don't want a roommate, as V1 consists of mostly single rooms. V1 also wins in terms of location for CS students, since it is the closest residence to the math building: depending on where in V1 you live, the commute from your room door to your class door can be as little as 3 minutes (I timed it).

UWP is a good choice for those who want to cook for themselves or would like an attached suite. They can be similar to single rooms in that if you live with unsocial roommates you might not see them that often.

The caf is overpriced junk. Also the walls are paper thing (in fact, one of the walls in my room was corkboard :\). UWP is cool because suites are cool. Especially when you have a projector for that large wall they give you. I would have rather lived in UWP for my first year tbh.

Just my opinion though.

[unoho]

im planning to go to software engineering.. which residence would be closer

[Tony]

UWP

[unoho]

thnks tony

and im also wondering whether or not i should get a meal plan. cuz i can't cook at all and if don't get a meal plan, my parents would have to provide me with food somehow

and if i do get a meal plan, i dunno if the food is worth it. like im not too picky about my food (as long as it tastes gud, im happy) but it needs to be decent. a regular "high-school cafeteria lunch" type of food would be fine.

any feedback is much appreciated

[Tony]

unoho @ Wed May 05, 2010 11:10 pm wrote:

and im also wondering whether or not i should get a meal plan. cuz i can't cook at all and if don't get a meal plan, my parents would have to provide me with food somehow

Now is an excellent time to start learning. It's cheaper, better, available in bad weather, and you'll be getting all the ladies on your residence floor*

Outside of Villages (residences that are not UWP), the meal plans are significantly less useful -- it's money on your student card that... is apparently different from regular money that you load the card with; and used to purchase food on campus, such as from Tim Hortons or that one sandwich place.

You do get some discount for using student card money vs. cash/debit/credit... at least I was under the impression that my coffee is cheaper when they swipe the watcard. Unless you get some additional benefits from preloading all that cash as a "meal plan", I'd just keep the money and transfer it to the card on as-needed basis. Honestly, I think a "meal plan" is just a convenient way to get a lump sum of money out of parents paying for school (convenient in a way that the University gets all that cash up front and collects interest on it, since it will take you 4~8 months to go through the amount).

*maybe.

[A.J]

It all depends on what you are comfortable with. The problem with V1 is that if you are rooming with someone, the doors connect, so you have to go through your roommate's room to leave or enter your's. I got into to CS too, and am rooming with some friends of mine at MKV (though the chances of us getting in aren't too likely).

[Brightguy]

unoho @ Wed May 05, 2010 11:10 pm wrote:

and if i do get a meal plan, i dunno if the food is worth it. like im not too picky about my food (as long as it tastes gud, im happy) but it needs to be decent. a regular "high-school cafeteria lunch" type of food would be fine.

The largest cafeteria on campus is located in V1, and is indubitably better than high school ones. However, you should also consider location: UWP has no cafeteria, and the closest one has little selection and is only open at lunch.

The meal plan apparently gives you mostly a 13% discount, but honestly I never figured out how it worked.

[Euphoracle]

V1 mealplan and REV mealplan give you NO DISCOUNT. They give you a '50%' discount so they say but they remove 50% of your money as a deposit = NO SAVINGS. The only meal plan that saves you anything is the non-res meal plan which saves you the tax (13%).

Oh and just a little tidbit, you don't need a meal plan to eat at a caf. You can still pay $ there. Hell, you can put flex$ on your watcard and use it as if you had a meal plan, you pay the same... you're just not forced to finish $1800 by the end of the term (which I REALLY struggled to due--I had to buy non-mealplanners food and get paid back in $ just to not lose the 50% deposit at the end of the term)

[chrisbrown]

Euphoracle @ Thu May 06, 2010 6:43 am wrote:

V1 mealplan and REV mealplan give you NO DISCOUNT. They give you a '50%' discount so they say but they remove 50% of your money as a deposit = NO SAVINGS. The only meal plan that saves you anything is the non-res meal plan which saves you the tax (13%).

The advantage to the villiage meal plans is that although they take 50% off of the initial payment (something like $860 i think), if you run out of money on it, you can add to it and get full credit. So you could pay $860 deposit + $860 food money + $100 added on = $960 (not $910) meal plan dollars at 50% off prices. You essentially double your money past the initial amount. It's only significant if you eat a lot, but of course, a meal with 2 sides comes to around $10 regular price so it's really not that hard.

[jcollins1991]

unoho @ Wed May 05, 2010 11:10 pm wrote:

thnks tony

and im also wondering whether or not i should get a meal plan. cuz i can't cook at all and if don't get a meal plan, my parents would have to provide me with food somehow

and if i do get a meal plan, i dunno if the food is worth it. like im not too picky about my food (as long as it tastes gud, im happy) but it needs to be decent. a regular "high-school cafeteria lunch" type of food would be fine.

any feedback is much appreciated

Cooking for yourself isn't that hard... I have never cooked before this term, and I'm finding it fairly simple... A $1 bag of pasta and a few cans of $3 sauce is enough for probably 6 or 7 dinners, compared to V1 where the same amount of money would get you a single meal... Theres nothing wrong with canned food and it's almost impossible to mess up with it... Adding other stuff to your meal is easy, just cut up meat thinly and it can be cooked within a few minutes, and you'll still be paying less than you would at V1... If you don't care about saving money, you could still get better fast food for the same price at places in the University Plaza and the coffee and donut shops on campus... Oh, and the fact that you'd be eating ALOT healthier if you cooked for yourself is also a plus...

[unoho]

jcollins1991 @ Fri May 14, 2010 10:07 am wrote:

Cooking for yourself isn't that hard...

I agree on wht you said...cooking is wayy cheaper and healthier.. i could probly learn some stuff (cooking) by the end of the summer,
but problem wit cooking is that if i live in V1, i believe they don't give u any cooking stuff... so gonna be hard to cook
but if i do live in UWP (most likely i will), then i could possibly think about cooking

but again im lazy

oh i was also wondering if i live in UWP with some of my friends, does each individual person have to pay $5000 or does it get divided among every person and therefore becomes cheaper?