I'm weirdly excited to see that I'm not the only person in the world that uses paycheckcity.
If you are only going to be there a year, it might well just be worth finding a furnished place. It's not exactly cheap to move stuff across the country (unless you do it yourself). You won't be spending a whole lot of time in your apartment intern year, so the fact that you aren't picking your own stuff shouldn't factor in too much.
It depends on you. For some it's worth it for other it's not. Imho the question should be rather do I really need furniture for a year? You're going to spend at least 12 hours a day at work, 8 hours a day sleeping and at least 1 hour a day commuting and doing morning/evening stuff thus you have only about 1 to 3 hours per day to be at home and "doing something" there. I don't really care how fancy my apartment looks when I spend there just a 1 or 2 hours a day.. and that one free day per week? yeah that's the day I'm definitely not going to spend there either... But what I do care about is my bed... not the bed frame but the bed mattress. I'm going to buy high quality comfortable mattress b/c I'm not willing to sleep on some crappy mattress when I need to get fresh for next day after a long shift... and imho bed (mattress) is usually the worst thing in the apartment.. they don't care about it.. they buy some nice stuff rather then new mattress since no one is renting the apartment after trying it but after seeing these nice but useless stuffs... So for me it would be really easy decision.. I would picked unfurnished apartment with at least basic appliance and I would buy cheapest bed frame but good mattress and the rest of furniture that I would REALLY need I would buy second-handed... but as I said - it just depends on how you feel it.
I used my old macbook throughout medical school and bought a sleep number bed with my laptop allowance. BEST MONEY SPENT EVER (other than LASIK).
