Uni accommodation at York

[dottygamekeeper]

DD had her place at York confirmed today - however, she has just had her accommodation offer and didn't get her first or second choice. She has been offered a different college, still on campus and en-suite, which is good, but has been offered it on a 51 week let (not the 40 week lets she had applied for). This bumps up the cost by an extra £1500 per year. and means we will end up paying for the room for weeks when she is unlikely to be there.

She rang to ask if she can change it - she can either reject outright, and go to the bottom of the pile (so then might not get accommodation, or get an offer of accommodation at the other campus, which is also more expensive), or they have told her to see if she can find anyone to swop with.

Has anyone with DC at York had experience of this, and were your DC able to switch accommodation further down the line?

DD was in Halifax College for her first year - it definitely wouldn't have been her first choice but she was really happy there in the end. She also had to take 51 week let - this actually worked out well as most of the part time jobs want you to work through the holidays and will up your working hours to full-time. She (along with most of her friends) only come home for very brief visits. When she started, we did discuss the possibility of swapping accommodation but she decided not to as she got on so well with her flat mates. I hope your DD enjoys York as much as mine does.

Was York her firm or insurance? Did she get her application in before the deadline? Was the room offered on her list of choices? I think DS had to list about 8 choices when he applied.
DS just got his York accommodation offer and got his first choice. I was surprised at how quick it came, he had to accept and pay £300 by 22nd August. I believe they guarantee accommodation to all first years.
I wondered whether DS got his because it was a more expensive option? I may be wrong but my observation was always that the cheaper accommodation was in highest demand.
Did they say that if she went to the bottom of the list she wasn't guaranteed anything? A 51 week let is unusual for a 1st year.

Thanks for the replies, York was her firm, her accommodation application went in ages ago before the deadline and she has literally just got the offer today, once UCAS firmed her place. This was her 3rd choice (on reading her application through, it appears she had confused this choice with another one in the same hall - Alcuin - which was only a 40 week let which she put down as her 4th choice).

Her first and second choices were cheaper, and I imagine this is why they went quickly. I suspect the 51 week lets are less popular than the shorter ones, because of the cost, hence why she has been allocated that. I have already pointed out that if she had read the small print, she would have ranked the 41 week let ahead of the 51 week let, on the original application! (she is very independent, so had applied for it all without getting us to cast an eye over it...)

On the basis of Fuckingmoles post, it sounds as if maybe they don't come home very much anyway, and at least she can leave all her stuff in the room throughout the holidays - I just didnt really see the point of paying for virtually the whole of next summer, by which time we will probably be paying rent on a house for 2nd year anyway. (I don't know at what point the contracts for 2nd year rentals would start?)

DD will be studying Theoretical Physics, so wanted a hall on campus, relatively near the labs (first choice was Vanbrugh).

DD said most people had decided where they were going to live and with whom by early in the Spring Term (this seems ridiculously early). Her contract last year started at the end of July for one year. However, they moved house this year and wanted one which had a contract starting mid-June so for a while she was paying rent on two properties.

I think the coming home does depend on the individual and she seems to be in a house with very independent flatmates. DD has been home 3 weeks in total this year and her best friend has gone home even less - the pair of them are currently away backpacking and won't be back until October. DS is off in September to a different uni and I expect to see more of him.

The coming home may well be influenced by location of boy /girl friend as well as distance from home .
DS1 is going into 3rd year (not York) and comes home about once per term plus all the holidays.

It's true they do tend to rush into plans for second year flatmates, too quickly IMO.
York seem to have campus accommodation available to 2nd and 3rd years as well as freshers (most unis only have room for 1st years). It's cheaper to live off campus but convenience may be a priority.

Is she in the Alcuin extension over the road? By the time you have trekked over to Alcuin, it's not much further to the extension

(Apologies if she is in a different block, it's been a while since I was there!)

But she's only half the campus away, and the bonus with not being in Vanbrugh is that she won't get sprayed with duck shit whenever she steps out of her room if the fountains in the central lake are on

Good point about the duck shit, Pandas...!

I think a little walk down from Alcuin, if its where I seem to remember it might be, will be good exercise.

The duck shit is well worth avoiding.

I had to cross that lake a minimum of 4 times a day when I was there - it is impossible to avoid inhaling it via fountain spray most of the year...

The bonus about being over that way is proximity to the library (was the bane of my life getting there when I needed to!) and the bookshop (may have moved?) and, even better, close to Heslington and therefore the Charles and the Derry

I've just paid DDs deposit.
Her department is by the lake, but she likes ducks (with orange sauce)

Yeah, my department was right on the lake too, hence all the cross-crossing!

You get dire warnings in freshers week about being sent down if you harm any dick, goose, mongoose or coot...

Ha! Duck, obvs.

Although there may well be several dicks that it might be tempting to harm during freshers week...

...and god knows how my autocorrect got from moorhen to mongoose!