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Imperial College Accommodation

The Imperial College Accommodation Guide!


Lots of questions have been asked by eager prospective students about the accommodation at Imperial! So, here is a detailed and in-depth guide for all the halls and the whole accommodation process. I'll try and collect accounts by students living in each hall, to give you guys a full and unwashed student opinion on the matter!

Firstly, a brief introduction. I am a current second year Physicist at Imperial College. My first year was at Garden & Weeks Hall, and it was the most eventful and exciting time of my life. I think everyone's first year should be amazing, so I'm putting this guide together so you can make an informed decision. Hope you find it useful!

You will get an email of some sort with a form you will need to complete. In my year, this email was received in late August, after results day. However I've heard that the previous year got this in May, so you may very well be making these decisions very soon (before your results :O).

[INDENT]The form asks you questions like:
- Do you tend to sleep before 11pm?
- Are you a smoker?
- Are you under 18?
if so you are legally not allowed to share a room
- What are your hobbies/interests?
you get a box to write keywords separated by commas, how much this contributes to what people you share with / live near you is unknown
[/INDENT]

You will be allowed to select a price band, which I think increments in twenties: £110-130, £130-150, £150-170, etc. I'm not sure though. Also you can select a room type: single or shared. You also specify which you place a higher priority on, price band or room type. I THINK I picked price band, and got put in a lower price band than my selection, and my friend picked room type, and got a shared room when she picked single. God knows how they figured that. XD

And finally, you must choose exactly five--no more, no less--halls of preference. They are not ranked in any way. The system will try to allocate you one of your chosen five. Almost all of my friends did, you will be particularly unlucky not to receive one of your five choices

You will be told which hall and what type of room you have been allocated in late August (well, it was for me, not sure if it's still the same now, with the application being in May and all). You move in on the weekend of the beginning of term, for you guys it will be Saturday 28th September 2013. And from there, freshers' week i.e. loads of awesome events organized by your halls + induction to your department, and WELCOME TO YOUR NEW UNI LIFE.

Payments


You pay for 39 weeks, from beginning of October to the end of June. This INCLUDES the Christmas and Easter holidays (3 weeks and 5 weeks respectively). The rent includes all utility bills (gas, water, electric), high-speed AMAZING FAST internet, and an insurance. Each room also gets a telephone that has free unlimited internal line calls.

You will first have to put down a £250 deposit before moving in, but you will get this back at the end of the year. The fees are paid in three installments, one at the beginning of each Term 1, 2 and 3. I seem to remember each of the payment deadlines being exactly one dare after when we received student loan. ^^ The three payments are not the same amount, it depends on how many weeks are in each period. I think Terms 1 and 2 were roughly the same and 3 was quite a bit less.



General facilities included with every hall-- SELF-CATERED, you have a shared kitchen, though the size and number of people you share with vary. You'll have your own lockable food cupboard, again size varies from hall to hall. Some halls give you a lockable fridge space as well. There is at least one communal area with entertainment items in place, i.e. pool table, foosball table, TV with consoles. There is also a coin-operated laundry room for every hall. All halls use swipecard access, your Imperial College ID card will unlock your hall but only your own. Some halls use the same swipecard access as your room door key as well, but most still use conventional physical keys.

Quick classification briefing, halls have four main qualities about then: location, price, quality, capacity. Typically location and quality correlate to price, and capacity just affects random things, like how crazy the events are, or if you prefer a more family-community type feel, etc. My definition of quality is how new/shiny the facilities are, and how non-peeling the paint on the walls is.

NOTE: Please DON'T skew your opinion by the size of the halls I have listed! I'm putting this here because I did this, so I'm sure some of you guys will do to-- it is not necessarily true that the bigger the hall, the better. No hall will be too small; if the size is described as "small" it will mean that you will be able to know pretty much every single person you live with in one big happy community. "Average" means you will know most of the people you live with, and "large" means there will be a load of people who you will never meet/see/know fully. But regardless of what the size of your hall is, you'll still make all the friends you'd want with the people you like, so it doesn't really matter. \o/

Below I am organizing them by location. Please note that on each hall's Imperial page you can go on a virtual tour of the different types of room and kitchen / common rooms. Use them, they're awesome!


Beit Hall
Location: Opposite Physics building, 2min away from campus
Capacity: 313 students (very large)
Quality: Good[INDENT]
Room Types
Single En-Suite: £181.65 - £196.93 per week
Single: £165.44 per week
Twin En-Suite: £112.77 - £129.72 per person per week
Twin: £111.58 per person per week

[/INDENT]

Further Information




Prince's Garden Halls:
Prince's Garden is a small square area of grass, with trees and benches and all that, really lovely to hang out in during summer. Imperial halls cover three sides of Prince's Gardens, Eastside, Southside, and Northside (Garden & Weeks). It's about a 4min walk to campus. It's slightly more removed from the craziness than Beit, but still conveniently close enough that you can enjoy all the luxuries.

"Essentials", a small convenience store is located at the bottom of Wilkinson Hall (one of the three Eastside halls). It has all the essential food, drink, toiletries, etc. that you need, although it can be a bit pricey buying from there every day. And Eastside bar, located underneath Gabor Hall (Eastside), is a modern bar with a cool ambient vibe. Priced the same as the union bar, I think, although it closes at 11pm every night where union bar is open 'til 1am on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Finally, the university gym, Ethos, is located next door to Garden Hall along the north side of Prince's Gardens. Very close to a lot of convenient facilities.

PERSONAL OPINION Note on Eastside and Southside: although it looks very very shiny and attractive, for the friends I knew who were living there, the novelty wore off after a while. There are a large number of internationals there (probably due to the high accommodation cost), so the community feel was a little "dry". In my opinion, it is more worthwhile to spend a bit less, and get into a really great atmosphere hall with awesome people, than spend a lot of money for some aesthetic shiny facilities. And because you have en-suite rooms, awesome kitchen facilities, the common rooms are used less often and you don't get to integrate with everyone in your halls as well. The people I knew living there almost never left their floor. Also, NOTE-- if you mess around and do drunken silly things, you get fined. The penalty at other halls is to have a meeting with the warden and a bit of a slap on the wrists... at Eastside and Southside, £40, £60, £100, just like that. :<

Eastside Halls
Location: East side of Prince's Gardens, 4min away from campus
Capacity: 435 (very large)[INDENT]Wilkinson Hall: 156 (average)
Gabor Hall: 158 (average)
Linstead Hall: 139 (average)
[/INDENT]
Quality: Very High
[INDENT] Room Types
Single Deluxe En-Suite: £244.94 per week
Single Premium En-Suite: £210.44 per week
Single En-Suite: £181.68 - £196.84 per week
Twin En-Suite: £129.66 per person per week
[/INDENT]

NOTE: Eastside appears under the accommodation choice system as a single option, despite having three completely separate halls within it.

Further Information



Southside Halls
Location: South side of Prince's Gardens, 4min away from campus
Capacity: 435 (very large)[INDENT]Selkirk Hall: 125 (average)
Falmouth and Keogh Halls: 155 (average)
Tizard Hall: 126 (average)
[/INDENT]
Quality: Very High
[INDENT]
Room Types
Single Deluxe En-Suite: £244.94 per week
Single Premium En-Suite: £210.44 per week
Single En-Suite: £181.68 - £196.84 per week
Twin En-Suite: £129.66 per person per week
[/INDENT]

NOTE: Southside appears under the accommodation choice system as a single option, despite also having three completely separate halls within it.

Further Information



Garden & Weeks Hall
Location: North side of Prince's Gardens, 4min away from campus
Capacity: 145 (average)[INDENT]Garden Hall: 81 (small)
Weeks Hall: 64 (small)
[/INDENT]
Quality: Average[INDENT]
Garden Room Types ***Garden hall is currently closed for 2013-14***
Single: £151.06 - £165.41 per week
Twin: £89.60 - £99.77 per person per week
Triple: £74.06 per person per week

Weeks Room Types
Single: £151.06 per week

[/INDENT]
NOTE: I have listed them together in this guide, because they are essentially the same hall with joint events and stuff. However, under the accommodation choice system, they are two SEPARATE halls.

Further Information




Evelyn Garden Halls:

PERSONAL OPINION Note on Evelyn Gardens: A lot of people are quite quickly put off by the fact that all the Evelyn Gardens halls are more than 5 minutes away from campus. Well, two good things arise from this: it is DRAMATICALLY cheaper, and because there are so many halls around that area there is a very good university community feel. My friend living in Beit decided halfway through the year that she wished she'd been placed at one of the Evelyn Gardens halls, because the people there are so much closer to each other. Because you'd wait for 5 minutes for friends to walk into campus together for 15 minutes, but at Beit you'd just leave 'cause it's only 2 minutes away. Also, 15 minutes is not that far at all, come second year onwards you'll have to get used to trekking 25+ minutes to get into uni, or even taking the train. *gasp*

Bernard Sunley
Location: Evelyn Gardens, ~15min away from campus
Capacity: 89 (small)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single: £165.44 per week
Twin: £111.60 per person per week
Triple: £74.01 per person per week

[/INDENT]
Fisher
Location: Evelyn Gardens, ~15min away from campus
Capacity: 156 (average)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single: £103.25 - £116.56 per week
Twin: £79.68 per person per week
Triple: £59.64 per person per week
[/INDENT]

Further Information



Holbein
Location: Evelyn Gardens, ~15min away from campus
Capacity: 64 (small)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single: £151.14 per week
Twin: £99.75 per person per week

[/INDENT]
Southwell
Location: Evelyn Gardens, ~15min away from campus
Capacity: 182 (average-large)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single: £150.45 - £165.44 per week
Twin En-suite: £119.44 per person per week
Twin: £99.00 - £111.60 per person per week

[/INDENT]
Willis Jackson
Location: Evelyn Gardens, ~15min away from campus
Capacity: 119 (average)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single En-Suite: £181.68 per week
Single: £165.41 per week
Twin En-suite: £120.19 per person per week
Twin: £111.65 per person per week

[/INDENT]

Other Halls:
These guys aren't clustered together in a group like Prince's Gardens or Evelyn Gardens, and are usually located a bit further out.

Pembridge
Location: Pembridge Gardens, ~25min away from campus
Capacity: 99 (small-average)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single En-Suite: £141.92 - £149.10 per week
Single: £108.02 - £132.79 per week
Twin En-suite: £89.81 per person per week
Twin: £89.60 per person per week

[/INDENT]
Parsons House
Location: Charing Cross campus, ~25min away from (South Ken) campus
Capacity: 42 (very small)
Quality: ?

[INDENT] Room Types
Single: £121.82 per week
[/INDENT]

Further Information



Xenia
Location: Waterloo, ~25min away by tube from campus
Capacity: 150 (average)
Quality: Good? (guess from room pricing and pictures)

[INDENT] Room Types
Single En-Suite: £170 - £200 per week
Single: £130 - £140 per week
Twin: £110-£170 per person per week
[/INDENT]

Further Information



Notes & Advice


DON'T choose one specific hall and set your heart on it!
You do not have ANY preference ranking when selecting your options. Because of the random nature in which the computer allocates the halls, you are likely to get one of your five choices. Use this guide to get an idea of pricing, location and facilities, but don't feel gutted if you don't get any one particular hall. You will have a great, awesome time wherever you end up. :smile:

Don't panic!
I know this is a really massive thing, but don't fret about when they're gonna send you the accommodation email or if you haven't received it and everyone else has. XD It will come in time and you will make your decision then. By the way there is no bias for how early you return your options, as long as its before the deadline everyone's choices have equal weighting.

Consider your finances
Uhm, okay. I'm not meaning to be patronizing here, but going off my own personal experience, I was ready and willing to go for the most expensive halls just 'cause they were pretty and shiny, even though I couldn't really afford it. I mean, you guys probably aren't that stupid, so it's cool. Tbh the higher prices aren't really worth the shiny facilities, because what really makes your hall experience are your fellow hall residents, who will be cool and awesome regardless of how much you're all spending. :smile:

Make the most of it!
It's your life, it's your uni experience. Take EVERYTHING with you, soo many people in the first term "oh man I wish I'd brought my guitar/easel/dart guns/etc." BRING THEM. Also, do EVERYTHING. Join clubs, participate in events, run for hall committee. Essentially, living in halls will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so really really make the most of it. (I really miss Weeks. D:smile:
(edited 11 years ago)

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
Guys if there are any questions, comments, or insights from other Imperial students who have things to add, please post here! I can edit my main post to add stuff in. :smile: Hope this is helpful to you, let me know what you think! Thanks.
Original post by xalcro


You will be told which hall and what type of room you have been allocated in late August (well, it was for me, not sure if it's still the same now, with the application being in May and all). You move in on the weekend of the beginning of term, for you guys it will be Saturday 29th October 2012. And from there, freshers' week i.e. loads of awesome events organized by your halls + induction to your department, and WELCOME TO YOUR NEW UNI LIFE.


Should be 29th of September 2012.
Reply 3
Original post by 3uNic3
Should be 29th of September 2012.


You are correct :P I have rectified this.
Reply 4
HELLO,
Basically, I have realized that I really don't know very much about the halls that aren't surrounding Prince's Gardens (and Beit Hall), so ANY contribution from the TSR community about the Evelyn Gardens halls or the ones around Notting Hill Gate / Edgware Road, would be excellent!

Also if you lived in any of the halls and want to submit a student's opinion or contribute something, please let me know!

Thanks :smile:
What would be my chances of getting my accommodation preferences? I'm lazy, so if I chose the 5 halls that are closest to the main campus and specified en suite (I have Crohn's disease so I'd prefer this) then do you think I'd get one of them?

Also, which halls are the most social? It's just that I checked the Beit hall website and it is really up to date with tonnes of information about different events and stuff, whereas other hall websites were lacking in that respect.
Reply 6
Original post by vedderfan94
What would be my chances of getting my accommodation preferences? I'm lazy, so if I chose the 5 halls that are closest to the main campus and specified en suite (I have Crohn's disease so I'd prefer this) then do you think I'd get one of them?

Also, which halls are the most social? It's just that I checked the Beit hall website and it is really up to date with tonnes of information about different events and stuff, whereas other hall websites were lacking in that respect.


There aren't five choices close to campus that offer en suite. You can apply for Eastside and Southside, but not their individual halls (I think). Then there's Beit. Those are the only close halls with en suite rooms. Most people get one of their 5 preferences.

As I have said before, I think you are very likely to get an en suite room as you have a particular medical condition where an en suite would be a massive help. Just email the accommodation people before you send off your application to see what they can do. I think there is a section on the application where you can mention any specific disabilities or medical conditions, but it might be useful to make them aware in advance.

All the halls are pretty social. But it will vary year to year depending on the group of people who live in each hall.
Original post by Zottula
There aren't five choices close to campus that offer en suite. You can apply for Eastside and Southside, but not their individual halls (I think). Then there's Beit. Those are the only close halls with en suite rooms. Most people get one of their 5 preferences.

As I have said before, I think you are very likely to get an en suite room as you have a particular medical condition where an en suite would be a massive help. Just email the accommodation people before you send off your application to see what they can do. I think there is a section on the application where you can mention any specific disabilities or medical conditions, but it might be useful to make them aware in advance.

All the halls are pretty social. But it will vary year to year depending on the group of people who live in each hall.


Do you know how else I can get info? I've emailed them twice but haven't received a reply, only the automatic response that they are receiving a high number of emails and provide answers to common questions :s-smilie:
Reply 8
This is SO helpful and it solved so many of my questions! I've been looking for websites that will sum up all the halls in a simple and straight-forward layout. And here it is! Thank you so much!
Those information are indeed very useful!
and I just want to ask is it possible to choose the roommate if I prefer to live in a twin room?
and some people said: the sooner you reply to the university, the bigger chance you will get your desired room. Is that true?
Thanks:smile:
Reply 10
This is very helpful! Any ideas when they send the accommodation email to us?
Original post by xalcro
...


Don't forget Orient House man. Or I can do it if you want?
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by I'mBadAtMaths
Don't forget Orient House man!


They've changed the accommodation bit of the website now, Orient and Wilson aren't included.
(edited 12 years ago)
Original post by catestevenson
They've changed the accommodation bit of the website now, Orient and Wilson aren't included.


Really? That's sad
Reply 14
Original post by Palladium
This is very helpful! Any ideas when they send the accommodation email to us?


Mid may
Reply 15
Original post by vedderfan94
Do you know how else I can get info? I've emailed them twice but haven't received a reply, only the automatic response that they are receiving a high number of emails and provide answers to common questions :s-smilie:


Have you tried phoning up?

If you don't get a response, then just mention the situation on your application form. I'm pretty sure there was a section for medical conditions.


Original post by Miss Shining
Those information are indeed very useful!
and I just want to ask is it possible to choose the roommate if I prefer to live in a twin room?
and some people said: the sooner you reply to the university, the bigger chance you will get your desired room. Is that true?
Thanks:smile:


1. You cannot choose a roommate. The wardens mix people up so that new friendships can be formed.

2. Not true. Just reply before the deadline (27th July) and you will all get the same chance.
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 16
When applying to the 'halls' with 'multiple halls' (like Southside/Garden & Weeks), do you choose individual halls (Tizard, Garden) or the entire set? I assume it's the 'Southside' or 'Garden & Weeks' but I'd like to know for sure.

I apologise, that was a dismally constructed sentence

Thanks in advance :smile:
(edited 12 years ago)
Reply 17
Original post by NP473L
When applying to the 'halls' with 'multiple halls' (like Southside/Garden & Weeks), do you choose individual halls (Tizard, Garden) or the entire set?

I apologise, that was a dismally constructed sentence

Thanks in advance :smile:



You can apply to Garden and Weeks individually as separate halls.

However, for Eastside and Southside you can't apply to the individual halls (as far as I know).
Reply 18
Original post by Zottula
You can apply to Garden and Weeks individually as separate halls.

However, for Eastside and Southside you can't apply to the individual halls (as far as I know).


Okay, thanks. Still haven't a clue where I'm applying to be honest :biggrin:
Reply 19
Original post by NP473L
Okay, thanks. Still haven't a clue where I'm applying to be honest :biggrin:


Pull all the names into a hat :biggrin:. Saves you making the decision :tongue:.

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