Finding Home: A guide for choosing housing for HBS students
Having trouble deciding where to live? Let Wayhome do some of the tough thinking for you.
A lot of Wayhome’s users are inbound HBS students, so we’ve helped all types of pre-MBA home-hunters figure out what’s right for them. Find whichever profile matches your situation & see if we can’t help shed some light on your decision-making process.
Family-man Fred
As much fun as packing Fred’s 2 kids & partner into a dorm room sounds, HBS limits the dorms to single occupancy (also, FYI: pet-friendly on-campus apartments are scarce & limited to 1 pet/household). For Fred, the weekend-noise of on-campus apartments is a small price to pay to be able to see his kids at lunch. If he doesn’t get a place in the housing lottery, though, the promise of a life outside the campus ‘bubble’ isn’t bad at all (even better: off-campus could mean finding a place with square-footage higher than his GMAT score). There’s no wrong choice here, mostly since HBS clubs, organizations, and structured events do a stellar job at building awesome communities for partners and families.
Rachel Rager
Rachel’s spent the past 6 years studying and/or building financial models, so she’s looking to unwind a bit over these next two years. Fortunately for Rachel, HBSers’ evenings are often busier than their days. On-campus is the obvious choice for socialites like Rachel. If she wants to host parties of her own, she’ll want an apartment in OWA or SFP. Otherwise, dorm life is simple, affordable, and a manageable 10-minute walk to Harvard Square bars.
Miami Mia
Mia’s so averse to cold, she wears mittens when she drinks margaritas. She would’ve gone to Stanford to stay away from Boston winters, but she got into HBS, so Palo something-or-other isn’t an option anymore. The apartments are only a five minute walk from class, but that’s still too far. Since HBS’ dorms are connected to class buildings via an elaborate tunnel network, Mia’s aiming to spend her next two years nestled warmly underground.
Section-X Xavier
If you’re weirded-out by living on a campus where your family’s donated half the buildings, or if you’ve never lived in a place without an adjacent helipad, on-campus might not be your speed. But fret not: Boston’s best monied neighborhoods are just a few minutes’ drive from campus.
Non-profit Nasir
With no interest in consulting or finance, Nasir’s mindful of his already-burgeoning student debt. On-campus housing offers a spectrum of pricing, but the cost per square foot is relatively high, even by Boston standards. Living off-campus will give Nasir the widest array of options — for his wallet and his post-MBA career.
If you’ve got nothing in-common with our five protagonists, drop us a line and we’ll help you sort-out finding a new home. If you’re looking off-campus, Wayhome can help with that too — use it like Pinterest to save listings, and it’ll show you extra pics & details for places you’re interested in.
