I lived in Northwood for 4 months and it was an awful experience.

Firstly, the ceilings and walls of the apartments are very very thin. The footsteps from above sound like an ?elephant stomping?, in the words of a member of the housing staff! This creates a lot of problems when your neighbor has an entirely different schedule from yours, like studying into the wee hours of the morning or waking up really early.

There are also a whole host of problems with loud water pipes gushing, loud and clear conversation percolating from all the walls, and some apartments are located extremely near major roads without sufficient sound insulation.

With this poor sound insulation, loud and boisterous parties can easily disturb neighbors who are studying. However, my complaints to the housing staff were repeatedly ignored and when they finally got back to me I was chided for making the complaints in the first place!

Despite being an on-campus housing facility primarily meant for graduate students, these incidents clearly demonstrate that Northwood is not committed to providing a conducive living environment to students who are serious about studying. Instead, this is a community where the ?right? to hold loud parties supersedes the right to have a quiet environment for studying and sleeping.

As a result, I terminated my contract at the end of December, had to forgo spending Christmas with my family, moved to a much better living space that costs $150/month more despite my limited student budget, and all that in the bitter cold of Michigan?s winter.

If you are coming to Ann Arbor to seriously study hard with a demanding workload, Northwood is not the place to live.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 02/24/2009
The Northwood apartments are aimed primarily at families with children. They are a great place to be if you have kids and the location is outstanding. If you think you're going to study at home, then you are kidding yourself. The person/child density is high, so you will need to make arrangements to study on campus or elsewhere, but your family will be in a great place.

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