My stay at Sterling was ok. I was lucky that my neighbors were quiet. When there were problems with appliances, maintenance usually came to fix a request in a timely manner.

When I moved in, some of the tiles in the kitchen had been broken or were peeled up. There was also a hole in the wall behind our refrigerator. These problems were all noted in our move-in condition report. One time our refrigerator broke after the office closed, so we called the 24 hr maintenance and they came to fix it. I also spotted some small ants in the living room at one point. I called and they came and sprayed the area. I didn't see any more ants for the rest of my lease period.

I also made a lot of use of the volleyball courts. I was disappointed in that many of the lights were broken or they would not always come on. Even when I called ahead of time to let them know I wanted the lights to be on since I was going to have some of my coworkers over, they didn't always go on.

At Sterling, you get a key to the apartment and a different key to your room. The key my roommate received to her room did not work. So she requested that the lock be changed so that she could get a key that worked on her room. They came and changed the lock, locked her door, and left a note telling her to come to the office to get the key. Well, we both arrived back at the apartment after the office had closed. So, she was effectively locked out of her own room. When we called about it, she was first told that they would have to charge something like $20 for them to come out and fix the problem. In the end though, a security guard ended up bringing her the key around midnight (several hours later), and she didn't get charged.

Once, I left for a weekend to visit family so I unplugged my computer, but left the cord from my computer to the ethernet jack connected. Turns out there was a bad storm that weekend and lightning must have struck nearby as there was a surge in the electrical wiring and data wiring. My roommate's motherboard was fried. It was still under warranty so she got a new motherboard installed. Luckily, my computer was unplugged, but my network interface card (which was plugged into the data jack) got fried. My computer was not still under warranty, so I had to buy a new network interface card and install it. When I called Sterling about it, they said they were not liable for the damage that was done. My tv also was showing weird colors after the surge. I left it unplugged for an hour, and when I plugged it back in, it was back to normal.

In the winter, the parking lot was very snowy and icy. A plow did go through, but the ground still had a packed layer of snow and the parking spaces were not cleared at all. A lot of people couldn't get their cars out of the spaces since the tires would spin (this happened to me once). I also fell on the icy sidewalk once as I was walking to my building.

When my roommate and I moved out, we cleaned our rooms and bathrooms thoroughly and split up responsibilities for who would clean the common areas. I would say we left the place cleaner than we had received it. Yet, both of us did not get back our full security deposit. On a $75 security deposit, $62 was returned while $13 of damage was kept. The letter did not say what the "damage" was. My roommate and I are both very responsible people and so I was disappointed that we did not get our full deposit back.

I said yes to the recommendation part since I thought my experience was ok, but I must say that this year I have found a place that is just as nice, bigger, cheaper, and closer to campus than Sterling.

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