Housing
University Housing
Housing for students is available at Copeley Hill and University Gardens. Copeley Hill has one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, and both furnished and unfurnished apartments are available. University Gardens provides unfurnished one- and two-bedroom apartments.
For single graduate students it is likely more convenient to live off-campus (UVA Graduate Housing for more information).
Off-campus Housing
The chemistry graduate student stipend allows one to live in a variety of situations depending on personal comfort and spending preferences. Single living is affordable and desirable for some, but several of our graduate students also choose to live with roommates. Typical housing types include large apartment complexes along with privately owned houses and townhomes. Some graduate students have even purchased homes in the area. The Graduate Student Council has prepared a housing guide to help you find a place to live and to easily get started in the community.
The University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is distinctive among institutions of higher education. Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, the University sustains the ideal of developing, through education, leaders who are well-prepared to help shape the future of the nation. The University is public, while nourished by the strong support of its alumni. It is also selective; the students who come here have been chosen because they show the exceptional promise Jefferson envisioned.
Thomas Jefferson set to work on building plans that would mirror his philosophical vision. For Jefferson, the college experience should take place within an “academical village,” a place where shared learning infused daily life. Plans were developed for ten Pavilions—stately faculty homes with living quarters upstairs and classrooms downstairs—attached to two rows of student rooms and connected by an inward-facing colonnade. Each Pavilion was identified with a subject to be studied and inhabited by the professor who taught that subject.
At the head of the shared lawn would stand the library (not, as in most other colleges and universities of the time, a chapel), its dome shape inspired by Rome’s Pantheon and symbolic of the enlightened human mind. The plans grew to include two more colonnades of student rooms facing outwards and attached to a set of “hotels” where private businessmen served food for the students.
Jefferson corresponded with scholars in America and Europe, seeking the best faculty to teach in the areas of philosophy, arts, foreign languages, science, law, and medicine. Construction and transatlantic travel delayed the date of opening, but in March 1825, the University of Virginia opened to serve its first 123 students.
For more than its first year of operation, Thomas Jefferson was a living legacy among University students and faculty. Each Sunday, he hosted students for dinner at Monticello. Among those students was Edgar Allan Poe, a University student in 1826. Poe was among the students, too, who journeyed up the mountain to pay their respects at the funeral of their University’s founder, who died on July 4, 1826.
Washington, DC
Like many major cities, DC houses fantastic works of art in its museums and galleries. But in the nation’s capital, many of these collections are open to the public—and they’re free of charge. You can browse the monuments, tour the capitol, go to the zoo, and visit the Smithsonian Museums all for free.