Tell me about Chapel Hill, NC!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m a Brit heading over for grad school in August, and I’ve never been to the US before (though I am well travelled in Europe and Asia, and have lived overseas before).

I have a couple of questions:

  • I know it’s a college town, what does this mean, really? I spent my college years in Oxford (a small city that would be pretty nondescript without the university, another Slough maybe). But Ox is increasingly influenced by London, only 1 hour away, so it doesn’t feel provincial.

  • UNC hospitals - they look pretty impressive on the web. Any experiences? I have major heart and possibly neurological problems, so this is important to me.

  • On the living front, I’ll be on a stipend of $16,500. Let’s assume $12,000= $1000/mth after taxes. Would it be reasonable to spend $475/mth ($430 rent+estimated $45) on rent and utilities on this budget?

  • I have a slight dilemma. The $475/mth place looks lovely, but as I mentioned I might be looking at medical bills (in particular I’m on warfarin, so I’ll need to pay for that plus monthly INR blood tests). There is a much less nice-looking place for $435 all in. Is it worth it to save the $30/month?

  • Anyfink else I should know?

Cheers,
zhongguorenmin

2

Hi! I’ve lived in Chapel Hill for nine years (but will, unfortunately, be moving away at the end of July).

Lots of businesses geared toward students – sports bars, that sort of thing. Bus system pretty much revolves around the university; it’s the hub for most of the lines, and they cut back on the services in the summer and during school breaks. (On the plus side, riding the bus is free – it all comes out of student fees and local taxes.) UNC basketball and football are very, very big; you can expect that it will be very difficult to find a parking place anywhere near the university on game days, and a lot of people will be walking around dressed in school colors. A fair amount of cultural stuff going on – the university has a very good repertory theater company that does five or six shows a year, and a performing arts series that brings in a lot of good performers. It’s about a twenty-minute drive to downtown Durham and forty minutes or so to downtown Raleigh, both of which are fairly major cities and have universities of their own, so I wouldn’t describe it as provincial by any means. Carrboro, the next town over, has a very nice farmer’s market on Saturday mornings from March to December, and a smaller one on Wednesdays during the high season.

I don’t have any experience with the hospital, but it’s supposed to be good.

$16,500 is liveable in this area, but you’ll be on a fairly tight budget if you can’t work during the summers (I don’t know what the rules are for international students), and if there are medical expenses involved. I’d suggest going as cheap on the rent as you can, at least until you have a sense of what your budget is. (Carrboro is sometimes cheaper than Chapel Hill, and it’s very close and on the same bus system, so it’s probably worth looking there – or even in Durham if you’ve got a car.)

3

One additional thing about Chapel Hill as a college town, it is politically very liberal. This is in pretty strong contrast to much of the rest of the state of North Carolina. This liberal environment also translates into the general availability of vegetarian and organic food. In Chapel Hill you will probably find this similar to London, but in the rest of NC it will be less common. Being a college town essentially boils down to being different from the rest of the state.

The hospital is excellent, and Duke University in Durham (accessible by a free bus) also has an excellent hospital. You will have excellent medical facilities around. Usually stipends include health insurance, or at least the ability to buy it. Are you sure your prescriptions and tests won’t be included in the insurance?

With regard to the places to rent, it’s hard to say. Sometimes the less desirable student properties have higher crime rates or are less convenient. The campus is BIG, and if your health isn’t good you may not want to complicate your daily commute any more than necessary, so location is important, too. If your health is really bad, you may qualify to use a shuttle service for people with disabilities to get around on campus. Campus is BIG, hilly, and really hot in the summer.

Best of luck to you on your housing decisions.

4

My in-laws live in Chapel Hill and I’ve spent some time there doing research. It would be a lovely place to live for a few years.

Unfortunately, I can’t speak to the medical system (except that I’ve heard it’s quite good) or the rental situation. But I can give you some more general impressions.

Because Chapel Hill is a university town, it attracts people from all over the world. You’ll find the usual mix of whites, blacks and Latinos that you would in most North Carolina towns, but there are also lots of immigrants and grad students from other countries. In terms of the larger picture, I think this promotes a more cosmopolitan worldview. In terms of the smaller picture, it means there’s some great restaurants. Be sure to check out The Queen of Sheba, my favorite Ethiopian restaraunt ever.

As Harriet mentioned, Chapel Hill is also politically more liberal than much of North Carolina, though it may not seem liberal to someone from the UK. There’s more acceptance of gays and lesbians than you’ll find in many parts of the US.

Chapel Hill has a gorgeous campus and it’s a very pretty town. In the spring, it’s absolutely stunning. When I lived in England, it surprised me how* long * spring took to arrive. In the piedmont of North Carolina, it seems like everything blooms overnight all at once.

Coming from the UK, you’ll find the summers miserable. Hell, I grew up nearby and I find the summers miserable. Hotter 'n forty hells and humid to boot. Do not rent a place without air conditioning. You may think it’s an unnecessary luxury, but trust me on this.

Be sure to try North Carolina barbecue. It’s slow-cooked pulled pork, usually served on a bun with a vinegary sauce. Mighty fine and something we take a lot of pride in.

Finally, welcome to North Carolina! Glad to have you!

5

I’m the one responsible for the in-laws :). I lived there for a couple decades, although it’s been about ten years since I last lived there; take my advice with that in mind.

UNC Hospitals is really a great system. I was born there, I temped there through college, and I’m pretty impressed. Duke also has a great hospital and is about twenty minutes away. I think there’s a third hospital in the region with a less stellar reputation, but I can’t remember what it is.

That amount of money for rent actually strikes me as pretty low, if you’re getting a place by yourself (ten years ago I couldn’t find a decent place in Durham, a cheaper town, for less than $500/month). Have you considered getting a roommate or two? It’s a college town, and roommates abound. YOu might be able to get a short, more expensive lease somewhere until you can find someone you’d be happy living with. I second the recommendation to look at Carrboro, which when I lived there was cheaper than CHapel Hill and is extremely close by (that is, you can walk directly from one town into the other).

As burundi said, make sure wherever you live has air conditioning. There’s more to it than that, though: when I was in Durham, my two-room apartment had a wall-mounted airconditioner in one room, but it was on the second story of a miserably-designed building, and consequently summer nights were stiflingly hot, even with the AC cranked all the way up. Look for a place that has very good ventilation, good shade (Chapel Hill has spectacular oaks for shade purposes), and/or a strong AC.

One more happy note about Chapel Hill is that, unlike most US cities, it’s a highly walkable town. There are plenty of places you can live that are within a half-hour walk of campus; even Carrboro is less than an hour’s walk away. When I lived there, I walked at least as much as I drove, and could generally walk to work.

Daniel

6

I live just south of Chapel Hill and my husband is a physician with the UNC-CH family medicine department. The health care in this corner of the state is outstanding. If UNC can’t help you, then Duke University’s medical center can. This really is a beautiful place and I’ve lived all over the country. The best part—the mountains are 2.5 hours to the west and the beaches are 2-3 hours to the east. There are rivers and lakes, rolling hills, thick forests, wide plains…it’s just a beautiful state. There isn’t much of an arts scene yet, but that’s changing. As for a more metropolitan vibe, we don’t have much. But Atlanta is 5 hours to the south and DC is 5 hours to the north (by car). New York is only an hour away by plane, Boston is 2 hours by plane. The restaurants are unbelievable. Some of the restaurants in the Triangle area (that’s Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill) are rated among best in the country. And this is a BIG country. Splurge some time and go to Magnolia Grill in Durham, or Lantern in Chapel Hill, or Fearrington Inn in Fearrington. The summers are awfully hot and humid but that’s going to be the same almost anywhere on the east coast to some degree. Our weather here in the US is just not as even as the weather in Britain or Europe. We have tornadoes, hurricanes, thunder and ice storms. But most of the time, the weather is just lovely. Welcome to the “Southern Part of Heaven”.

7

If your budget is going to be really tight, it might make sense to take the cheaper place, unless there’s something really special about the more expensive one. If it’s much closer to campus, that’s a big plus, and worth paying that much more. (I’m just wondering where you’re finding anything under $500 in Chapel Hill–that’s incredibly cheap for this area). If you feel like posting where the apartments are, I can tell you what the area’s like and if it’s a good place to live.

$45 for utilities might be a little bit low. I’m assuming you’ll have a cell phone, so that’s probably at least $30 a month, and electricity in a small apartment will probably be around $40 a month (more in the summer if you use the air conditioner a lot). Water might be included. If you want cable, I think it’s $45 a month (I don’t have cable, so I don’t know exactly how much, but it’s around that). Then there’s internet access (very important).

Medical care is expensive, even with insurance. I’ve had the grad school insurance, and I still ended up paying over $50 a month just for prescriptions. The UNC Healthcare system has a good reputation, but I think it really depends on what department you’re dealing with. I was misdiagnosed by the ENT department (nothing life-threatening, but it wasn’t a good experience). I had surgery, and that was great (every doctor who looks up my nose says how nice it looks). I’m sure they’ll take good care of you, though.

There are a bunch of other threads on things to do in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and the Triangle. I’ll post links if I can find some of them.

8

I live in the country west of Chapel Hill, have for 6 years, had moved away, lived in Chapel Hill 8 years before that. It really is a great area to live in, and exploding, population wise, with people from all over moving in. It used to be a very small college town, though always a bastion of liberalism in the South, but now is pretty cosmopolitan, with the Triangle area Raleigh-Durham-CH on a huge boom of expansion. Overun, even, and I’ll just be positive about that.

To someone used to London, it will seem small, but, don’t think you are landing in some podunk hillbilly town. Chapel Hill is very welcoming of folks from Across the Big Pond , and you won’t find any distrust of foreigners. The UNC campus is very diverse. Seeing what the campus has become over the past two decades, it’s a city unto itself. The medical facilities are top notch, UNC hospitals, and, as said here, Duke Hospitals are very close.

If you, in looking for rentals, come upon Carrboro, and wonder if it’s some odd backwater outpost; nope, it’s adjacent to Chapel Hill, usta be called “The Paris of the Piedmont”, because it was the more bohemian place you could live for cheap. I have wistful remembrance of $80 rent w/ roomates back in the day, in a house that needed work. Now, Carrboro is all renovated, but cheaper than Chapel Hill, and has a nice sense of community. It’s the place where more younger folks live, and has a nice thriving cafe atmosphere. Smaller, but also very cosmopolitan.

Hope this helps you, and, welcome to NC!

Oh, yep, as Daniel and Burundi say, opt for the air-conditioning. The heat and humidity are going to be a shock.

9

What would rent be like if you were to try to find an apartment to share? It’s been far too long since we lived in Chapel Hill but a large percentage of students shared apartments, vs. footing the entire bill themselves.

The town itself is as others have described it. The medical care is great. I don’t have any great love for the Duke University medical system - too many stories from medical people who were involved at Duke when we lived there: one acquaintance - who was an attending doc at Duke - seriously thought about having a medic-alert bracelet made up saying ‘in case of emergency, do NOT take me to Duke’. Another one told me that Duke was so into doing all the cool cutting-edge stuff that their basic patient care wasn’t so good. NC Memorial Hospital is not as famous but has a lot of very good medical people.

Mass transit - at least when I live there - was not so great. Especially between the various towns (Chapel Hill/Carrboro and Durham or Raleigh).

If you don’t have medical insurance through your employer, medical care in the US is very pricey. No nationalized medicine here. So you will need to budget for your medications and tests. Reputable online pharmacies can give you an idea of what the prescriptions cost - e.g. at drugstore.com, I see warfarin 5 mg tabs for 34.99 for 90 tablets. I would bet that you can get some sort of insurance through your job, though - when Typo Knig was in grad school at UNC, he got insurance through the university.

Will you have a car? Depending on where you wind up living, the town is very bikeable though obviously that makes it tough to do big grocery-store trips.

10

Welcome to the 'States! :slight_smile:

Chapel Hill was basically founded around the university, and until just recently, its social, political, and administrative climate have been heavily influenced by UNC. For example, the town’s utilities used to be university-owned, and utilities payments were made to UNC. Nowadays, there’s more and more influence from the nearby tech-industry-heavy RTP areas, and a larger number of Chapel Hill’s residents are out-of-town commuters. As others have mentioned, the town is politically liberal and a nexus of people of different backgrounds and personalities. Nearby Carrboro is quite earthy and a haven for merchants of locally-produced and organic products. It is also a very bike-friendly community, and has several very nice paved and unpaved bike paths and road lanes, as well as numerous other public recreation areas. Chapel Hill/Carrboro also has a reasonably famous music scene, and was the starting point of groups such as Ben Folds Five and Squirrel Nut Zippers. There are several good places to see local artists perform, if you’re into that.

UNC Hospitals are quite good, actually. They are in the process of a major renovation/rebuilding process, and many of the facilities are brand new. The staff there is excellent as well.

Utilities will probably cost a fair bit more than what you’ve estimated, especially with air conditioning in the summer (you can try to go without, but it gets not only hot here, but muggy and nasty as well…a fan can only get you so far). Then there’s the issue of cable/internet if you want those. Some companies offer package deals on TV and internet, so I’d recommend looking into those (Time/Warner is the local cable provider) if you’re interested in getting both.

I’d say go for the nicer place. $475 is a pretty good deal for a nice apartment in this area. Most halfway decent apartments seem to have their rents creeping into the $700-800 and up range.

Chapel Hill itself has a pretty good bus system that - this is the best part - is FREE to ride. It is completely subsidized by the town, and is by far the best way to go between campus and points in town if you don’t want to buy a campus parking permit (they are expensive). Public transit between towns in the area sucks, so it’s best to use a personal car for that.

In general, the weather is very nice, with the part that most people find unbearable being the summer heat. Winters aren’t too terribly cold, with only a few inches of snow each year and highs averaging above freezing. Fall and spring are generally mild and pleasant.

If at all possible, try to avoid going out either during a UNC basketball game or during graduation weekend. Restaurants and bars tend to be ridiculously crowded at those times.

Finally, my best advice is to just take some time to explore the area. There are many interesting museums, stores, landmarks, and other places too numerous to mention. Nearby Raleigh has some great museums to visit, including the N.C. Museum of Art which just hosted a major exhibit of Monet paintings. Both the mountains and the coast are roughly 3-4 hours away by car, which is great for weekend trips.

Having grown up in Chapel Hill, it’s difficult for me to think of it from the perspective of someone re-locating here. However, the people I know who have moved here from other places absolutely love it. Hopefully you’ll have a great experience here as well!
Cheers,
zhongguorenmin
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11

Arrgh, I just wrote a long reply which is now gone, gone! (wails)

Thanks for all the super-helpful and detailed replies! The initial excitement of moving had died down, but you guys have got me all hyped for it again :slight_smile:

I will have medical insurance (that provided by the grad school), but I think it leaves the door open for some pretty non-negligible bills: $200 deductible, 20% co-insurance, $2,000 out-of-pocket maximum, 40% prescription co-insurance (no maximum). These figures are for in-network (bc+bs blue options) - roughly double costs for out-of-network.

I’m assuming there’s no roadblocks to me getting my warfarin on the WalMart $4 prescription drugs programme. I’ll be on warfarin (or another anticoagulant) with blood tests for life, and it’s a relatively cheap drug, so that’s ok. In England, I’d get the tests free, of course, but prescriptions are £7 ($14) per month per drug (all prescriptions are free here in Wales, where my parents live) - so even including blood tests, the difference is manageable.

The real decider will be my other drugs I think. I take a beta blocker ($27 according to the bc+bs site) and an ACE inhibitor ($61!). Different doctors have given me conflicting information on whether I’m on these long term or just whilst my heart recovers from the surgery - aortic valve replacement - I had in April.

I’ll also need to see a cardiologist at least once per year, and get the standard tests (echo, ecg, chest x-ray). I’m assuming this will be in the hundreds of dollars, even after insurance.

Wow, just writing this is making me want to seek out the cheapest place I can find! I think if I budget $100 per month for medical costs, that should be somewhere on target.

Still, my health won’t be all bad for my expenses - it limits me to 2 or (at a push) 3 drinks in one session, and to be honest I prefer not to push it. My hard-drinking days are behind me (legal age here is 18, and I really put some back when I was an undergrad - college bar was 200 feet from my room, and oh so subsdised cheap!)

On the air conditioning, I’m with you. I lived in an initially non-aircon apartment in Fukui (about 3 hours north of Osaka) in 2005-6. Japanese apartments are stereotypically insanely poorly constructed and insulated, and that was certainly true in my case. I arrived July 31, and Fukui is noticeable hotter and more humid than Tokyo. I tell you, that month I prayed for a swift death as I tried to sleep with 3 puny fans pointing at me every night.

I should have been clearer - the housing quotes I had were for a room in a shared house, hence my lowball estimate on utilities.

I have found another apartment listing on craigslist, which I am seriously considering. It’s in a place called ‘Glen Lennox apartments’ (zip code 27517), near campus in Chapel Hill itself. Walking distance to campus, though as I understand it campus is so large that I shouldn’t put too much faith in this. Only 200 yds from the bus stop though. I noticed some negative reviews on the Web, but they seem to largely refer to the age of some of the places, and this one has been recently refurbished.

The rent is $323 per person, and I’d be sharing with 2 other people. My share of utilities is estimated at $50. The main drawback seems to be that it’s small, and perhaps away from the funkier areas of Carrboro and Franklin st (?). Still, a girl who lives there now is staying for next year, and she’s a UNC student - so it can’t be that bad!

I’m not too bothered by the size of the apartment - my other options of where to go were central LA and New York - my money would certainly have stretched a lot less far in either of those places!

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be moving to Chapel Hill and the US in general. Almost all my friends, including the hardcore America-bashers (the ones who steer an innocent conversation with a friendly American tourist into “so… who did you vote for?”) are revealingly and satisfyingly jealous that I’m getting to live there for awhile. And not to be morbid, but there’s a non-negligible chance that this bum ticker of mine will kill me at some point in the next few decades, so I’d like to see as much of the world as possible. A few thousand $ in medical bills pver 5 years seems like a fair price to pay!

My main whinge is that on my stipend I might (will!) struggle to see the places in North America that appeal to me, off the top of my head: Boston, Niagara Falls, Vancouver, Canadian North-West, Seattle, Vegas, San Francisco, Death Valley, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, Tijuana, D.C., Colorado mountains.

Again, huge thanks for all the tips,
zhongguorenmin

12

Describing Glen Lennox as “walking distance to campus” is something of a stretch, but it’s a nice enough place, and as you say, there are buses.

13

Where is Glen Lennox? Is it down 54, near Estes Elementary?

Daniel

14

I’m not sure where Estes Elementary is, but Glen Lennox is right where 54 meets 15-501, sort of between the campus and University Mall but on the opposite side of 15-501.

15

The Glen Lennox apartments are on a busy road (Hwy 54/Raleigh Road/South Road) – two lanes each direction, plus a turn lane in the middle. It is the main road running from Interstate 40 west to the UNC campus. The Glen Lennox apartments are about a mile from campus, but that mile is up a pretty long hill – not something I think you’d want to walk up every day.

Check out the Chapel Hill map here. If you look above and to the right of where it says “Univ. of NC-Chapel Hill,” you’ll see “Glen Lennox” actually on this map. This map makes it look like UNC comes all the way down the hill (along South Road) to Fordham Road, but in fact the walkable campus is further west, up where it says “South Road” and “S. Columbia Street”. The part of South Road that is directly above the words “Univ. of NC-Chapel Hill” is the hill I’m talking about, a long hill that goes up to the West, up to campus. In terms of just having a place to live, Glen Lennox wouldn’t be bad; it’s just a short bus ride up that hill to UNC.

BUT in terms of really getting the flavor of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the University, it’s on the wrong side. If you look at the map again, you’ll see that Franklin Street and Carrboro are west of campus. You’d be living east of campus, and not in a neighborhood-y type of place, but along a busy street that gets a lot of commuters, across the street from a gas station and a strip mall. (A pretty nice little strip mall, but still.)

So I think it really depends what you’re looking for in a place to live: Decent if not fabulous apartment, in close proximity to the University? Yep, Glen Lennox is that. Living in the mix, near shops and restaurants and walkable streets, people out and about in the evenings and on the weekends? No. Glen Lennox isn’t that. But I’m not at all sure you can get that, on the budget you’re talking about, and there’s nothing wrong with living in one area and visiting the other. As others have said, the bus system in Chapel Hill is great, and it’s free.

16

Also, you should inquire if any medications are specially subsidized if you get them through the Campus Health Services (the health center reserved particularly for students). Typically health centers offer basic, free or extermely cheap health care in limited areas that affect students such as birth contro/gyn exams, upper respiratory infections, strep throat, sprains, etc. (they refer you for anything more serious). The fee for using the Health Center is included in the “fees” part of your tuition and fees, so its not optional. :slight_smile: Things covered by the fee (ie no additional cost to you)

I went to college at a Virginia state school and visits to the Health Center were free for these types of things AND they had their own pharmacy which was subsidized. A friend of mine was able to get his heart medication there at what he described as “greatly reduced cost.”

Ah, yes, it is as I suspected. They have special pricing: all medications in their phrmacy are flat $20 co-pay for 30 days supply. Definitely check to see i they carry your particular, more expensive, medications.
http://campushealth.unc.edu/content/view/228/124/

17

Okay, yeah, Glen Lennox is where I thought. And remember the OP is from Europe: walking a mile is nothing! :slight_smile:

That’ll probably be about a 20-minute walk to campus each way, and it’ll get you to the heart of campus. I don’t think it’d be that bad.

(Oh, and I think it’s near Glenwood, not Estes–I’m getting my schools confused)

Daniel

18

Yeah I’m pretty happy to walk a mile or two. What I used to do when I was in school was walk in (about 2.5 miles) and get the bus home. The best of both worlds!

zhongguorenmin

19

Thanks - you’ve certainly given me some food for thought. I think I am, on balance, very tempted to take it- after all, I’ll have 5 years in Chapel Hill, so it doesn’t matter a huge amount if I’m out of the action a bit for the first year.

It’s a bit of a wrench, and I would like to live eg near the farmer’s market in Carrboro, but my conscience tells me to play it safe financially for the first year.

Cheers,
zhongguorenmin

20

Unless of course, you think it’d affect my ability to bring girls back? :eek:

I want to explore America thoroughly, especially undergraduates easily seduced by affectedly high-class English accents… (throws cold water in face).

Yes, this is a dilemma indeed.

zhongguorenmin