MIT CS PhD student here. Pretty similar story in Boston/Cambridge. Every grad student spends most of their income on rent. What's worse is that MIT and Harvard own a lot of the land in Cambridge and literally have thousands of students that live outside campus increasing the rent demand. MIT is trying to do something about it by building new grad dorms with their most recent one opening up next year but guess what...the rent is insane ... 2.6K a month for 1 bedroom and this is a student dorm... The justification is that its 'below market rate' but stipends are not at market rate.
$2.6k per month?? where is that? school owned housing in Cambridge? I don't think I've ever seen prices that high for off campus stuff in the mission hill & Fenway area
In my experience university housing is almost always more expensive than market rate, NYU and a few other places excluded. This was true even at my moderately sized southern United States school with no land pressure. They know living close to the university is valuable to students and they charge accordingly.
I feel like I have to disagree. I did a masters there a few years ago, and lived in somerville for 2700/mo in a large 3BR split with two roomies. So very cheap. The commute was just about 25 minutes on very affordable, very comfortable public transit (red line).
Certain areas of Cambridge and Boston are very expensive, but we have plenty of options that are easy to make work.
A quick ddg reports much lower rates than what you suggest.
