Where will I be living? Who am I going to live with? How is my room going to look like? How does accommodation work? Will I get my own room? My own toilet and shower? This where just some of the few questions that came to my mind as soon as I realised I was leaving home.
Accommodation in the University of Surrey is organised in a range of bands, which have different things to offer and different prices to pay depending on what you can afford. This rooms are located around the three different campuses that the university owns: Stag Hill campus, Manor Park campus and Hazel Farm campus.
When you do your accommodation request, you will be asked which your preferences are between the bands (A to E):
- Band A: shared and single rooms. Kitchen, toilet and shower shared.
- Band B: these rooms are almost like band A rooms, but most of them have a washbasin inside the room.
- Band C: they are just like band B rooms, but more spacious.
- Band D: in this case, the rooms are en-suite (toilet and shower in your own room).
- Band E: these are enhanced en suite bedrooms.
You can unfortunately not be guaranteed that you will be provided the band type you are asking for, seeing as there are almost 15000 people that will live with you in the campus at the same time. You cannot choose which campus you want to live in either, but all three campuses are great so that shouldn’t be a problem at all. I can guarantee that Surrey team will do their best to make sure you get your cosy room!
Flats are usually gender mixed flats, which means you will be living with both boys and girls. However, you also have the opportunity to ask for an all-male or all-female flat.
All first year students are provided accommodation in campus their beginning year, and seeing as that needs to be that way all the following years, you will need to find off-campus accommodation for your second year. Do not worry about this at all, you will make friend as soon as you get here, and you will be really excited about having the opportunity to rent your first house with them all. I’m right now on the process of finding a house, and although we might felt lost at the beginning, University of Surrey’s accommodation centre is always ready to help. There are also plenty off-campus accommodation talks that guide you on all this process. You will never be alone! When third year comes, a lot of people goes on placement year, and since some of them might be your housemates and you do not have someone to leave with, you again have the opportunity to come back to university accommodation. Finally, if you have been on placement and you need to finish your degree on your fourth year, you again need to find somewhere to live by your own (accommodation centre will always be here to help you, do not forget that!).
In my case, I live in a band C room in Battersea court, which is located in Stag Hill campus. I share three toilets and three showers with 14 people, as well as a big kitchen. I perfectly remember the first day I got in, and how I meet each one of them. We now have a really good relationship, we try to do flat meals as often as we can, celebrated Christmas all together and share plenty of culture differences. Apart from the academic aspect, I have learnt a lot from living with my flatmates, things that I’m sure that I will never forget. WONDERFUL THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU TOO!
If you would like to know more about accommodation, you can find lot more information about each band, each court and each campus going online on https://www.surrey.ac.uk/discover/accommodation. There are lots of pictures and videos, prices for each band… go investigate!
