Talk to me about UCL Halls!

[drubbin]

DS filled in his UCL hall application form today. It's obviously a bit of a lottery, so he didn't spend long agonising over the options.

Not many of the rooms were ensuite. We looked at the hall pages to try and find out how many students would be sharing a bathroom, but they didn't say, and we didn't see any bathroom pictures either. Does anyone know, typically, what the bathroom situation is? Do any of the halls have really grim bathrooms? Are they cleaned regularly or do students clean them themselves?

Similar questions for the kitchens - if self catering, are the kitchens kept clean by staff or do they just have to hope everyone does their bit?

When offered a hall, do they get the chance to look around before saying yes/no? (We live in Greater London, so if it's grim he does have the option to commute from home).

Ds went self catering and was fine and he is not one who likes to cook. He came back cooking all sorts! They soon learn!

Yep, me too. Worried that if we budget for catered, we may just get a very expensive nom-catered room..Seems daft that you can't put in separate budgets for each.

Self catering is much more flexible and there are plenty of places to eat at the uni if you don’t want to cook - the info is all on the UCL website. There are supermarkets and food outlets to suit every budget and taste in the local area too. In my son’s case they would have a ‘flat meal’ where they all cooked and ate together occasionally as well as cooking for himself, the odd ready meal and take away. He really is a decent cook now!

True, cooking is a great way to make friends and they might as well learn now before they move out in their second year.

The Hare Krishna peeps used to give away plates of vegetable curry at the top of Gower Street (outside the old medical school library, iirc, now the Grant Museum of Zoology). I don't know if that still happens but it was quite a good lunch - they didn't seem to discriminate between students and non-students, either, but since I was one of the latter, I only allowed myself to succumb a couple of times.

We spent most of yesterday evening compiling a spreadsheet of all of the room options, including the inter-collegiate options, so we can apply filters for things like catered, ensuite, recreation facilities etc. We've also uploaded all the postcodes to Google maps so we can flag them in the spreadsheet as yes/no on location. Of course it won't stop him being allocated a room that he doesn't like, but it will help him to express preferences a bit more strategically. It's a shame that similar tools aren't available on the UCL website to download, because they're very helpful. We had to scrape the data from many different web pages and it took a few hours.

There doesn't seem to be any logic to the pricing. As a pp said, some of the catered rooms are cheaper than other non-catered rooms and its not obvious why. I guess it just comes down to the cost of running individual buildings, e.g. some might cost more to heat, maintain etc.

Just checked ...the restaurant at the Indian YMCA is still going

www.indianymca.org/our-restaurant/

Dead cheap in my day.

I sent DD on a week long student cookery course designed to help create meals from store cupboard items and what is in the fridge. It wasn't cheap but repaid itself many times. The same could done at home post A levels with a student recipe book and regular practice cooking family meals.

DS was in catered (International Hall), but hated the food and lived on Pot Noodles. After a year he worked out for himself why he was feeling tired and overhauled his diet, including good balanced packed lunches. A useful lesson.

One advantage of London Universities are that the SU and libraries are open late, and, for many halls, not too far away. Great if you have friends and a social life in halls, but if not you can do your socialising and studying on campus. DS also followed me in being expert in the cheapest restaurants in China Town, and I followed my dad in occasionally taking him out for lunch if I was in the area. My dad eventually gave up and took me to a carvery where he would watch with pride as I ate my way through three full meals.

Gosh @drubbin you are so organised. DS is studying so hard for A levels to make his offer that he has no bandwidth to consider halls. But I have insisted he do it by tomorrow.

The Indian YMCA restaurant is very good value and so are the rooms. I have stayed there once.

I have been teaching DS how to cook but he has got rusty in the last couple of months because he has been studying so hard. But hoping to revive the lessons post A levels. TBH he prefers to teach himself using You tube.

DS is a good cook, so he'd be happy with catered or self catered. He's very sporty, so needs to eat a lot, and may not have time to cook properly every day if he has evening training. But there is also a risk that he will miss catered meals and end up with a grab bag of sandwich, crisps and "confectionary" (!) a couple of nights a week.

So on balance we're leaning towards self-catered, but obvioysly don't want to pay for a self-catered room that is the same price as a catered room, when it isn't obviously better.

There’s a new Aldi/Lidl (sorry but sure which) at the end of Tottenham coirt road which is very popular with the students and lots of eateries/food shops (with too good to go deals) nearby. Also cheap pizza and snack places on the campus.

My DH is v sporty too. What sport does your DS play? Mine plays and is obsessed with football; hope he can play through his degree.

There is both and Aldi and Lidl a very short bus ride towards Camden. It's around 10-15 minutes form Bloomsbury.

Good to know. What a great location & it looks huge in the Google photos!!

goo.gl/maps/i3sZXXekRSDP33oS9

I worked around there and students do pretty well food wise!

Also worth knowing about toogoodtogo.co.uk/en-gb/

An app that allows you to buy cheap food at the end of the day or breakfast/lunch/dinner service from places like Pret as well as supermarkets delis etc. Some are very generous, so it helps if you can share.

And TodayTix and CentralTickets for cheap theatre and other tickets.

And the Japanese Kitchen on Tottenham court road is brilliant!

Audience Club - worth joining their waiting list.

There are loads of cheap eats in Bloomsbury, Drummond St has great curry houses, Chinatown, Berwick street market for fruit and veg.

Ha Marchingfrog, the Hara Krishna free meals is still running.

The Lidl near Garden Halls is walking distance, no bus needed.

Is the HK free? I know their cafe off Oxford st that is cheap and yummy.

Ha! Yes, DS has been using this during Sixth Form. He sometimes comes home with 5-6 Pret sandwiches/salads which he says he got for about £3!

My child is at UCL, first year. When you apply you have to select what you want- en-suite , self catering etc. - and put a budget. We wanted en-suite single self catering but got Ramsey hall. the rooms are ok but mattresses are shockingly awful - literally like a 20 year old camp bed. Toilets (mixed) are grim. Showers (mixed) are grim. A few floors have single sex bathrooms. There are no cleaners at weekends so you can imagine the state the are in when 30-40 kids use them. I take bleach to use the loo! Kitchens very dated and the oven is like a toaster oven from 15 years ago. You can’t do much cooking - pasta and sauce or beans on toast type if things at most. Catering - my child sends photos of food for us to guess what it is …. It’s not great. Breakfasts ok but limited with no seconds. Not great for 6ft 3 lads. All this for near on £10K a year.
Great location but my child has literally lived in the room for teaching as there has been almost zero in person lessons. My child has literally spent 30 seconds with the tutor this year, and had maybe a dozen in person lessons, since September. It’s been a joke. Lots of food options locally, either at UCL or takeaways etc. Due to covid and ucl’s lack of teaching in person (they are funnily a enough one of the named and shamed unis in the news today) it has not been the experience we expected. But my child has had a great time and we see what the next few years bring.

For anything online they're not actually expected to interact with 'live', though, there's no need to sit in their bedroom to access it. Take earphones and anywhere with free WiFi (and possibly a socket, if your laptop battery is anything like as feeble as mine) is a possibility. The cafe at the British Library used to be full of students. Rather too full, I seem to remember, but they may have addressed the issue now? Certainly DD in Birmingham used to log in from a local cafe, (when they weren't closed because Birmingham was in Tier 99 or whatever) just for a change of scenery, even though she and her housemates had perfectly adequate internet at home.

I shared a room in Campbell House East in 2012-13. Wasn't as bad as it sounds. Bathrooms were fine as cleaned very regularly, kitchen got a bit grim sometimes but I'm not traumatised from it or anything. It was super handy to be so close. I would've hated to have to get a bus back in between lectures and the close halls were always popular to meet in before a night out so good for the social side of things.

I think these things always seem a big deal before uni and then aren't. I just texted my sister who also went to UCL and she can't remember the name of her halls, she's 4 years younger than me!