UCD accommodation for veterinary student 2011/2012 (hopefully!)

ladymillybay

Hello - I'm hoping to study veterinary medicine next year and I want to live on campus. I'm from down south and know nothing about where's good, bad or just ugly and the UCD website SUCKS! I'm kinda think Belgrove or Merville but don't wanna be stuck in a twin room or in a house that needs the ESB card thingies. Can you help me please coz bookings open on Monday ... Also, does anyone know how the booking process works for CAO applicants? Thanks!

parker kent

Like it says on the website, the waiting list opens tomorrow, not the actual bookings. When the time comes, they'll let you know about CAO applications. But basically it involved logging in and confirming your place on the system. You'll pick your room and whatnot whilst doing that.

Anyway this is the current guidance for CAO students on how to book a room. Tomorrow you are just adding your name to the waiting list.

UCD Residences provides accommodation for First Year CAO students across all of its locations consisting of Self-Catering Apartments, Halls of Residences, and a new complex of Catered Accommodation which includes meals in the price. Specially adapted facilities are provided for students with disabilities.

· There are a large number of bed spaces being made available this year, a total of 832

· Spaces are allocated on a first come first serve basis

· Incoming students are able to choose available accommodation in a wide range of locations opening up a better range of price and facilities. (follow the links below)

· The room booking system allows students choose which room they want and will provide basic information on the profile of students already booked into an apartment (e.g. first year, second year, postgraduate, male, female)

· Applications will open initially on the 09th May 2011 allowing students book a priority place on the waiting list (on a first come first serve basis) should they receive an offer in the first round in August. Once you have accepted your CAO offer and the CAO have notified UCD of your acceptance (generally takes 24hrs) UCD residences will send an email telling you to go online and book your room at which time you will have a window of 24 hours to accept and finalise this room booking.

· The waiting list will be automated and will immediately offer rooms that come available to the next in the list. There will be a window in which students will be able to log on (24 hours), accept their offer and choose their room.

· As the ranking system is open to all CAO students it is our experience that even students with a ranking of over 3,000 on the list can get an offer of accommodation.

· In our experience rooms continue to come available into September. There will be an option of an electronic waiting list for students who could not get accommodation from the initial allocation. The waiting list will be automated and will offer rooms that come available to students based on their ranking. There will be a window in which students will be able to log on, accept their offer and choose their room.

Students are welcome to reserve their priority booking place or go on the waiting list from the 9th of May 2011.

Details on how to confirm your booking when you receive a first round CAO offer will be made available at this point.

Further information regarding room booking can be found on our FAQ page.

http://www.ucd.ie/residences/studentpages/apply/cao/

Whenever you are looking for something from the UCD website, use Google to find it. If you search for "ucd accommodation 2011", you'll find most of what you could possibly want.

There are loads of threads here on campus accomodation, so you can check them to see which place suits you best. I lived in Glenomena and Merville and they were fine. Belgrove always seems a bit of a dump.

supernutrino

A lot of the American and Canadian VET students pick Glenomena, so it seems suited to that course, because they book en mass and their leaders must have thought it was good.

Glenomena does not have the ESB card thing, you pay utilities as part of your overall accommodation fees and then its averaged out and you get refunded what you haven't used at the end of the year, with your deposit.

DO NOT go to Belgrove if your studying a serious and heavy subject like Med or Vet, you will never get a minutes sleep. Its fine when your going out yourself but they never seem to think enough is enough over there, even if its only a Tuesday they'll be loud and rowdy, whereas most other places Wed and Mon are the big going out/predrinks in apt beforehand nights

If you want REALLY quiet pick the blackrock campus but as a 1st year you'll probably want a bit of atmosphere and blackrock campus is mostly postgrads. So I''d pick Merville, Roebuck and Glenomena, the latter two are nicer, and they''re a nice middle ground between the over the top, never know when to stop Belgrove and the too quiet Blackrock.



Belgrove may be a serious kip physically but it is being redone during the summer apparently, and I think Mervilles getting another face lift, but Belgrove seems to attract tossers who think setting off a fire extinguisher is just hilarious, so I'd stay away from there.

ladymillybay

Cool - thanks guys for the help! I'm kinda thinking Glenomena now - the whole having heating sounds rather nice!! :P Just one more question - are all the Glenomena houses the same? And is there anything else I should know?

supernutrino

ladymillybay wrote: »

Cool - thanks guys for the help! I'm kinda thinking Glenomena now - the whole having heating sounds rather nice!! :P Just one more question - are all the Glenomena houses the same? And is there anything else I should know?

Most of Glenomena was only built in 2002 so its all v nice.
Buildings 9 and 10 were built in 2006 and they'd learned some things that they used to improve those buildings so there a bit nicer, better insulated, even nicer lifts, different type of windows, but the basic design is the same.

Rules. Don't be alarmed by the guest rules, the place is defo more restrictive than it was in the good old days but unless your tryina take someone back at 1am nobody cares about guests its just on paper. ...if you are taking them back late they can jump the far gate or if your a guy takin back a girl for er...tea and cakes..."come on man to man" with the security will prob get you through. With parties have some common sense have less than 10 people over dont' play music and pull your blinds and close your windows, dont call attention to yourself and you'll be ok, esp if your heading out around 12ish to town/a suburban club.
If the RAs come to your apt its because they got a complaint so you were bein too noisy..the difference between u getting a meeting where they tell you your bold and getting a fine is how much you cooperate with the RA when they come.

Internet. The wifi in house 8 is crap for some reason, or was last year, dunno if they've fixed it, everywhere else is amazing you get speeds up to 1.5mbps downloading. Torrents don't work through the UCD network though, neither will XBOX Live

Maintenance are very good, if so much as a light bulb in your bathroom goes they'll be over to fix it probably the next day.


TV is ****, no cable or digital just the arel channels like RTE (zzzzzz) and TV3 and not great signal. You'd also need to be lucky enough to have a room mate with a decent TV they dont come standard.

Walls are a bit thin so when your noisy whether it be music or ...other, stuff, keep it within bounds of reason.

RAs (students same as everyone else except they get free accommodation in exchange for the job)man the office out of hours untill 2am and are on call overnight should you lock yourself out, set the building on fire, get attacked by one of the foxes, whatever.

Roommates. This is luck of the draw, I've had AWFUL room mates and great ones. Best mix I've found is male and female from various years. Worst thing is all same gender from 1st year (unless they're all your friends). You pick your rooms online so I'd try to get an apt with people you know are also going to UCD, all go online at once and coordinate, remember the online booking system ALWAYS goes online before it says it will...ALWAYS. So stay up overnight or get up real early to grab a room, trust me its worth it. It was meant to come on at 9am one year, i stayed up overnight with room mates and bang there it was online at 4am and some rooms were already gone when I came on.
With room mates to avoid problems its best to have a talk about rules, cleaning etc on the first day, not 3 months into term. If your gonna have friends over knock on roommates doors and tell them you are and give them a rough idea when you be leaving, remember room mates could have an exam or a CA project due the next day you dont know about.


People bitch about the lack of ovens in Glenomena but if you get yourself a george forman or a small portable one you'll be fine. You really dont need one theres a 4 stove hob, microwave and you can ge tyour own GF. No ovens is cos of previous fires in Merville/Belgrove


As for which house to pick 8 has bad wifi as I said, avoid 4 because one of the gates is closed at night which channels everyone thru the other gate facing laundreette (right in front of 4) and everyone in 4 gets a nice loud blast of drunks coming home at 4am. 1 avoid as its right on top of reception and you don't wanna call attention to yourself when you've people over. So that leaves 2 3 5 6 7 9 10. 9 and 10 are also great because they're out of the way of the drunks on any night, so if your not pissed yourself, you dont have to listen to them much.


Jayzus i could write a book! Hope that helped!