General

Coming from the West Coast, the housing prices in St. Louis were insane. My fiancé and I knew we could not pass on the opportunity to acquire some prime real estate in lovely St. Louis. We took a trip to house-hunt in June, two months before class started, and found a house we loved. It needed some work, but honestly that has been one of my favorite things to do since starting school. It’s nice to have non-medical-school stuff to do. Coming home and pouring some concrete or painting an entire house is, in a way, therapeutic.

If you do choose to purchase a house, one thing to consider is getting a good real-estate agent. We interviewed a few before settling on someone we liked. He ended up having incredible perspectives on St. Louis and different neighborhoods that we could have never understood without living here.

Owning a home is something I have really enjoyed. It is a lot of work while also in medical school, but so worth it. I love playing music or watching Netflix as loud as I want because no one lives on the other side of my bedroom wall. If you are thinking about buying a home, you should absolutely explore it further and take a look at home prices on Zillow. I’m in the MD program, so we will likely only be here for four years, but we still thought the investment was worth it. We live outside of St. Louis in Ballwin, which is about a 20-to–25-minute drive. Traffic in St. Louis is almost non-existent compared to other major cities, even during rush hours, which is a huge plus. While my fiancé and I do not have roommates, you can always get a roommate or two if you worry about being able to afford the mortgage and bills. A lot of homes within St. Louis City are old and massive with four to six bedrooms, which makes them perfect for housing a few roommates to help with the bills. 

After living in Boston during college and moving to St. Louis from New Jersey, the housing prices and affordability of real estate in St. Louis were a pleasant surprise. I had some idea of buying my own place when I picked the WashU Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) based on my conversations with upperclassmen at WashU. When I first started school, I lived in a sublet for a few months while I figured out whether I was able to afford buying my own place, whether the monthly costs (including HOA, property taxes, loans, etc.) were comparable to renting alone or with a roommate, and which neighborhoods had the proximity to school and residential neighborhood feeling I was looking for. During my third month in St. Louis, after asking St. Louisans and other students who had bought their own place, I found an experienced realtor who knew how to navigate a turbulent housing market (at the time) with low inventory and high demand. After looking at townhouses and condos from Chesterfield (a 1-hour drive west) to South County, and losing many bids, I bought a condo in the Forest Park-DeBaliviere neighborhood, about 1.5 miles away from campus. It had everything I needed at the time and the timing aligned perfectly with the end of my sublet. During the last few weeks of my sublet lease, I spent a few weeks painting and re-doing some interiors to make the condo feel more like home before I moved in. I have really enjoyed working on interiors and furnishing and customizing it to whatever I want or need! It has its perks but is also a lot of responsibility. Having a great property manager and condo association has helped a lot!

I found my roommate, a fellow M1 at WashU, through a Google sheet that students filled out with a brief personal bio, expectations regarding living arrangements, and contact information so that classmates could reach out to each other. One of those classmates (who then became my roommate) also came up with an algorithm that matched people with similar living preferences. I started looking at housing options in June, signed a lease in late July, and moved in mid-August several weeks before orientation.  

Many people choose to live in the big apartment buildings that have doormen and parking. However, if you are okay living in a smaller building with around two to six apartments, you can pay quite literally half as much in rent for a much bigger space. The best way to find these good deals is to actually walk down the street in CWE and look for “for rent” signs and call the phone numbers; you won’t often see these apartments listed online. I live on Laclede in the CWE just an eight-minute walk from the medical school and pay the same price for an entire three-bedroom apartment as many of my classmates pay for a studio. It just takes a little bit more work to find these apartments, but there are lots of them! I highly recommend doing this if you can.

Before coming to WashU School of Medicine, I had never truly lived alone. I had roommates throughout college, and I lived at home during my gap year. My college roommate is my best friend to this day, so I was nervous about starting a new school and making friends without a roommate to make the process easier. However, I loved the idea of having my own space to come back to at the end of the day and having a place where I didn’t have to be “on” all the time. Medical school is both a wonderful and hectic phase of life, and I’ve found that having control over my living space keeps me relaxed and grounded. I’ve been able to set my ideal sleeping schedule, work out with music whenever I want, sing in the shower without disturbing anyone, and burn scented candles for 12 hours straight! Plus, I own an extremely noisy blender, and it’s nice to make smoothies without waking a roommate.

With regards to making friends and building community while living alone, there are 10 other classmates in my building and many others in the Central West End within a 5-to-10-minute walk. If anything, living alone made me more motivated to go out and meet people! I didn’t need to worry either. About half of our class lives alone, and there has been no difference in their ability to make friends or adjust to a new school and city. WashU students are social and inclusive, and we do a wonderful job of fostering a close-knit community. When you pick your living situation, pick what works best with your lifestyle and personality. You’ll make wonderful friends no matter what 🙂

I live in Ballwin, which is about a 22-minute drive from campus without traffic. If you are looking at getting a house or living somewhere further away from campus, it is a great option. There are a ton of nice suburbs that are a 5-to-20-minute drive from campus. Most people live within 5-to-20 minutes walking distance, and sometimes I feel a little FOMO being one of the few people living so far away. However, there are benefits to living farther away. First, traffic isn’t really a thing here. I drive on a major highway to and from WashU, and if I leave at 8 a.m. or go home at 5 p.m., it adds at most seven minutes onto the commute. It is also nice to be able to separate my school life and home life because I am so far away. There’s space out here, so I have a big backyard and go to a massive dog park on the weekends. While WashU isn’t downtown, it’s still a lot more urban than the suburbs. If city life isn’t for you, I would consider looking at places a little further out.

Going into the roommate search process, I wanted to live with fellow medical students as a way to make some close friends in my class and find camaraderie in the medical school experience even at home. We managed to find a rare three-bedroom apartment in the Central West End, and it’s been a great experience! On a practical level, I have absolutely benefited from the in-house reminders for required classes and assignment deadlines. On a more personal level, I have really enjoyed our morning walks together to class and our shared enthusiasm to host events for our friends/classmates (craft night before school started, horror movie watch party, murder mystery party, etc.). I was primarily influenced by the experiences of my limited STL network in choosing to room with medical students versus a non-medical student and my awareness of the emotional benefit that comes from having roommates (in choosing not to live alone). Living with two of my fellow classmates really helped my initial transition to STL and in building a support network for med school.  

I opted to live with two of my friends from college — one law student and one pre-med. It has been a blast living with friends, and I am constantly immersed in a different atmosphere and community outside of the medical school. It has been nice to be able to separate school from life and friends and not have medical school be a constant topic and stressor. It is always nice having different perspectives around and somebody to get my eyes off the computer. None of us are ever on the same schedule, so when any of us have a busy day, somebody can always help out with groceries, cooking, cleaning, or other chores. At the same time, however, I am not as active in our class as some others since I am already living with friends and am not as immersed in the WashU School of Medicine environment, though this is also likely due to social distancing as much as anything else. 10/10, would do again!

Andy B.

I live with one of my middle school (in Beijing!) best friends who went to WashU for grad school and is currently working from home as an architect. We’ve been friends for 14 years, so she’s basically family to me at this point. One of the perks of living with a non-medical student is getting to meet people outside of med school. Moving to a new city during a pandemic was quite scary; I could not have done it without the help from my roommate and her group of friends. My roommate and I have very different schedules, but it worked out pretty well . She cooks for me when I’m busy cramming for exams and vice versa!

Rohana G.

I lived on campus for all four years of undergrad and applied directly from school, so I had absolutely no idea how to do adult things like rent an apartment! Even over summer breaks, I had alternative housing options that did not require signing a lease. I personally found the Dis-O Guide (yeah, this one!) to be a helpful introduction to some of the popular housing options for medical students. Over the summer, current students also sent out a housing spreadsheet with even more detailed information about apartment buildings and ways to find roommates. Every leasing office I spoke with was very patient and understanding, so don’t worry about asking “dumb” questions; they’re probably very important ones! If this is something you’re nervous about, you can also do what I did and start with a year-long lease at The Core, where you don’t need to worry about utilities or commute or anything like that, and then take your time once you’re in St. Louis deciding if you would rather live somewhere else.