Alli Santmyer

Hey college students, happy Tuesday!  I’m back this week with another college-related post where I’ll dive into the best places to live at James Madison University.  I’m going to include on and off campus residences so stick around to find out where I lived during my time in school!

I started my freshman year at JMU living on campus in the Village.  In the Village, there are many dorm buildings but I lived in Weaver Hall.  A few positive things about the village are 1) it’s located right in the middle of campus so you have a lot of options for places to go to study or eat or hang out with friends and 2) the Village offers suite style living which means that there are three dorm rooms that all share one little common area so it provides a semi-private place to hang out with your suite that doesn’t require going to the bigger common area that’s open to everyone in the dorm.  The biggest negative about the Village is that there’s no air conditioning so in August and September it can get super hot, especially if you’re on one of the top floors.

Halfway through my freshman year, I moved across campus to live in the Skyline dorm area.  Skyline is made up of three dorms and I lived in Chesapeake Hall.  The Skyline dorms are the newest set of dorms on campus so moving from the Village, where everything was old, to Skyline, where everything was newer, was really nice!  Chesapeake is on East campus and located right next to EHall (the east campus dining hall) and Festival so it was awesome to be so close to food and the gym was only a short walk away.  This hall is set up hall style so everyone in the hall shares the same bathroom and the upside of that is you don’t have to clean it because it gets cleaned for you!

My sophomore year, I chose to stay on campus and I moved into the Grace Street Apartments.  The Grace Street Apartments were brand new when I moved in so I got to be the first one to live in my apartment!  Even though JMU calls them apartments, they’re dorm style so you have a kitchen and living room but the two rooms in the apartment are both dorm rooms and each room has two people in it.  Overall, I really liked living there!  There were plenty of washers and dryers so I never had to wait to do laundry and there were a ton of common area spaces to have Bachelor viewing parties with friends or study groups.  The biggest negative in living there was that the train tracks are right next to the building so every morning around 5 or 6am, the train would wake us up and it was so loud that there was no getting used to it.  The living room furniture also wasn’t super comfortable but it was just really wonderful to have a living room after living in a normal dorm the previous year!

My junior year, I moved off campus to the Campus View apartments.  I loved living off campus!  There’s something about having your own room and bathroom that just makes everything a little better.  We were only a five minute drive from campus and we were also in a brand new building so, again, we were the first ones to live there, and we were on the top floor so it was a really nice experience.  The balcony was huge and parking was never an issue so I’d say it was a wonderful place to live.  My only issue with Campus View was that the living room and kitchen areas were pretty dark.  Everywhere else had great lighting but, besides in the bedrooms, there aren’t any windows in the apartment so we always had to have the lights on in the kitchen or else it was super dark.  Also, the pool was pretty disgusting at Campus View but I heard they might be getting a new one with the new clubhouse they just built so cross your fingers!

And lastly, for my senior year, I moved to the Copper Beech townhouses.  Living in Copper Beech has been incredible!  It’s my first time in college living in a house and the separation of floors/levels has been the best part.  Previously, in my other apartments, everyone was kind of on top of each other and there was very little space.  In Copper, there’s a main level with a living room, kitchen, and a bathroom and then there are two bedrooms upstairs and two bedrooms downstairs.  It’s been so nice to have some differentiation between where you hang out and where you sleep and the added space has been priceless!  The clubhouse at Copper is also super nice and the pool is awesome!  The only issue I’ve had so far is the visitor parking.  There are so many people that live in this complex and not nearly enough visitor spaces so you have to be really on top of it when you have guests coming to visit.

That’s it for my overview of the best places to live in Harrisonburg!  Overall, I’ve been really, really lucky with living in nice places and I’m so glad I’m finishing my time at JMU with the best one yet.  If you’re a student at JMU and looking to move off campus and want more advice, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you right away!  Have a great week and I’ll see you again next week for another post.  Bye!