toronto- Ryerson?

raver22

ok so headin to toronto for the summer and just wonderin if anyone has stayed at ryerson university's summer residences and would they recommend them because ive heard very mixed reviews, from 1) a friends cousin leaving there because they were so dirty to 2) them being clean and new enough.......... any advice greatly appreciated, thanks!

breadmonkey

Ah Ryerson....

For a start, the place is perfectly clean so you don't need to worry about that.

There are good and bad things about the place.

Bad
1) Quite expensive.
2) Have to be let in and out by staff, some of whom are bent.
3) The building will probably be quite empty but if you have people living next door there's a good chance you'll be subjected to relentless noise complaints and probably evicted eventually. The flip side to this is that there's a very good chance you'll be alone and then you can pound music and party 24/7 and nobody will notice.

Good
1) Location. Living in Ryerson would be the equivalent of living on Stephen's Green here. It's in the very epicentre of the city meaning you never have to get taxis to clubs and all shops and services are right at your doorstep. But if you ever want to wander further afield, you are right on the subway line. I think there's 4 or 5 24 hour shops within a 1 minute walk.
2) The accomodation itself is good. It's extremely safe (if that's a concern) and the rooms are pretty decent compared to the crappy bedrooms in University of Toronto. It is important to note however that the building is surrounded on 1 (maybe 2) sides by other equally tall buildings (13 storeys iirc) which means that some of the rooms are in premanent semidarkness. To avoid this, I strongly recommend you opt for one of the 5 man rooms in the corner of the building. (The building is L-shaped so these rooms are bigger as a result and there's no problem with lighting). I stayed in room 409, so maybe ask for 309, 509, 609 etc.

Ryerson isn't really a great place for meeting people (at least it wasn't when I was there) primarily because there aren't a whole lot of people staying there. I suppose the main other place is University of Toronto but I wouldn't go for that because all you get is a room on a floor. You have to share kitchen (and fridge!) facilities with everyone else on that floor meaning it's virtually impossible to cook for yourself.

You can also try and find a house to rent. A couple of lads got kicked out of Ryerson for constantly smoking weed in their rooms (you can do this no problem if you just don't do it in the main lounge area, not sure how these guys pushed it so far) and they got a gaf out from the city centre a bit. There are pros and cons to this too. Not being in the centre meant they had to get a subway every time they wanted to do something etc. The costs for commuting were just massive. They were in a residential area with no other real signs of students about. On the plus side, it was REALLY cheap; I think less than half of what they were paying in Ryerson. And they had a back garden to lounge about in.:) From what I remember about trying to find accomodation, it's not that easy!

Tbh it depends on what you want yourself but I'm really glad I stayed in Ryerson and had an absolute blast there!