For those of you who have moved past the casual MBA program search into more in-depth research, you may have been as surprised as I was at how active most programs are on various social media platforms.
I'm a pretty active Facebook user due to being at Rice University when Facebook was only available at a select number of colleges. Through work, I've become an active LinkedIn user (it was a life saver during the interview process at UCLA, story to come later) as a means of connecting with professionals. Until this summer, my Twitter use was limited to obtaining Rice college baseball scores and... that's it.
I was stunned to start the research process and, using UCLA as an exmaple, see a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs (Admissions and Student Voice), and iTunes U.
(Thanks to the people who are currently logged into Fcaebook for volunteering your photos! Immediately on the left is another student blogger, Alejandra Rodriguez, and second from the far right is Chris Varin, exploring the world.)
Where is all this social media talk going, you might ask, given that the title of my post is about housing? It goes like this...
My last day of work was July 6, so I had planned to go to LA from July 19-24 to find a place to live. I had heard that some second years and classmates who had already visited LA to look for housing had looked at upwards of 30 places before signing a lease.
As my trip to LA approached, I happened to see a post in the Facebook group saying "due to change in living circumstances, the lease I signed is available." After inquiring some more, I found out that the location was this individual's top choice out of 35 places viewed... and with the pictures I was provided, was quickly proving too good to be true.
I called the landlord to inquire some more... and 24 hours later, 72 hours before my trip, was committing to sign a lease without setting foot in the building.
Fortunately, during my trip to LA, the place lived up to the pictures I had seen. I'm moving from this view of my neighbors in Houston
To this view in LA
But most importantly, only a few miles away, this running path and the beach!
Moral of the story... while there are plenty of resources available to use if you're so inclined to pound the pavement (fellow classmates haved used craiglist, westsiderentals.com, and the Daily Bruin to find housing in LA), don't hesitate to take advantage of social media and leverage your friends, classmates who've already done the search, and the school itself, and save your feet some trouble!
