I was accepted for fall 2010, deferred for a year (got a great job in medical field). I just had to pay a deposit, and I'll be joining you guys that choose to attend this fall. Speaking of which, anyone have any ideas about housing? I'm from the west coast moving cross country for the first time.
I am in Boston now because I go to school here (and grew up in the area) and have been looking for apartments as well since I'm pretty much done with dorm-living at this point. There should be a housing website link that Tufts sent you with a few weeks after your acceptance, and I'm imagining since you go accepted for last year, you probably already have access to that website. It actually has a few relatively useful resources: a roommate finding/available housing list posted by people who are already at Tufts who need people for next year. That's cool if you are not too attached to living by yourself like I am, and you essentially would be replacing a roommate that those people had for the most part. The prices on there seem reasonable, but again living with random people is not something that I am too excited about, but you may find it useful. They also have a pie chart that kind of breaks down where their students now live, which is surprisingly mostly the Cambridge area because Cambridge is pretty expensive. But for the most part they're students are really spread out around boston. The nice thing about Tufts' location is that since its in Chinatown, if you don't necessarily want to live in Chinatown, you can pretty much get to any neighborhood in Boston within 30-40 min T-ride. So I'm really looking in the brighton/brookline/allston/Jamaica Plain area because prices seem to be a little more, reasonable in that area. But you could theoretically live anywhere that has easy access to the red, orange, or green line and get to school pretty hassle free.
On the website they also have a list of the different areas in Boston which might help you to decide what sounds more like your thing. While these descriptions have some useful information, I would not use it as my primary source as it is something that sounds like it came out of a "Welcome to the City of Boston" website, so of course they might tell you about "the vibrant and bustling atmosphere of Chinatown" and "the diversity of East Boston" which are both very VERY true...but they also don't mention that China town is probably not the safest place one could live in Boston, and East Boston has history of gang violence in very particular areas, which if you decided to live you'd need to know to avoid those. As a female, these things are a little bit more important to me because from the intensity of the program, I know that I will probably be having frequent long nights in the library, and if I have to take the T home, I want to make sure that I live in a neighborhood that I'm comfortable with walking to at 11pm.
Try to find that e-mail if you can, and hopefully the site will be somewhat useful to what you're looking for. Also, of course you can try craigslist and I believe that website also just has a list of regular apartment finding website, which you could probably just google for. But I have lived in the Boston area for over 10 years now, so if anything should come up and you particular questions about neighborhoods and what not, please feel free to PM me.
Otherwise, I have until next Wednesday to decide on Tufts, and I'm leaning towards it anyhow, so I will probably meet you in the fall!!
