Catered Vs Self Catered

mizzy2

I would definately recommend self catered. I was sc in first year and it was very sociable. We all used to cook at the same time, and eat together whilst watching hollyoaks.

I also work in a hall in leeds now that is catered. The hall is sort of like boarding school with long corridors of rooms, in self catered you get more 5 bed flats which is better I think.

The students in this hall get a card with 7pounds a day loaded onto it. This isnt a lot considering they are paying over 1000pounds more a year. Also the canteen where they get their food is often crowded, not open on sundays and most of the students end up buying seperate breakfast cereal and takeaways as they are still hungry, or just cant be bothered with the 5 min walk to the canteen at 7 in the morning.

Self catering makes you more independent, you are also in control of your own shopping and what is going into your food. Its also more homely and less like being at boarding school. You also have more privacy at breakfast and can make food at whatever time you want, rather than sticking to set times.

Eat cereal for dinner if you want! As you cant do that in catered halls unless you buy extra!

o_c99

I had the pleasure of being in both catered and self-catered accommodation when I was at University. I must say that I preferred the self-catered option over catered.

Advantages of Self-Catered:

• You can choose when you want to eat (no set meal times unlike catered).
• You get to choose what you want to eat not what is available!
• You can learn to cook with your flatmates.
• It's fun and a great way of meeting new people.

Advantage of Catered:

• Somebody cooks for you!

There are probably more, but this is some of the pros of each.

Liz_M

I went to Manchester Met and I got in through clearing so the uni halls were full (and they guarentee a place in halls for all 1st years....so I dunno how that works) so i had to find somewhere myself I think someone mentioned manchesterstudenthomes.com that website is brilliant. I stayed in self catered private halls (not the halls of any uni but a private company so you get a mixture of people from different unis, years, etc). At first I didn't like that we were in flats of 5 people instead of 10 because I thought it meant we wouldn't meet as many people...but in the end I liked being in a small flat because it meant that you didn't have to worry about going into the kitchen and socialising with a big group of people if you were tired or not in the mood lol, and you do meet people on your course so you don't have to worry about not having anyone to go out with or live with the next year. In fact I had a big choice of people who I met because as it was private halls, I met people who were in their 2nd year so they already had groups of friends and knew all the good places to go out etc And I had an ensuite bathroom which I loved lol.
My halls was called Park View and it's owned by a company called Unite they have a website with different halls around Manchester. They weren't the cheapest but the place was quite nice. There were ups and downs but generally I enjoyed living there. If anyone is still looking for accomodation in Manchester then if u messgae me I can give more details about my experience at unite lol but I won't bore everyone with it here

b00kworm

I live in catered halls at the moment, and have spent under £200 in food since Sept and still have a box of goodies (sweets, biscuits, chocolate) under my bed and a cupboard full of food.
When I do shop, every couple of weeks with Tesco delivery, I organise most of my kitchen group as well, its easy just let everyone borrow your laptop for 10 min to decide. They think they are getting a good deal because I pay for the delivery charge, but I'm getting a better deal because using the codes online I get even more off the total cost. It's a win-win. The only thing I make my flat-mates do is help me carry it, especially when the lift breaks. (We're on the 9th floor btw!!) The only other things I get is occasionally milk from the campus shop, or ask a friend who lives in town to grap me a loaf of bread and bring it next time she comes up to campus. This way I get the points and they pay be in cash to save me going to the cashpoint.

Sorry I think that went a little off topic there.......

Short answer, self catered is better, you can eat what and when you want and if you dont feel like cooking on a particular day you can go buy from whatever is on campus anyway, nothing to loose!!

barginboyrob

Choose catered! It's a sociable time

plus in self catered, the place is always messy and every steals your food or pots and pans


ps. i've just realised, why was this thread bumped!

rjl89

self-catered was great.
- you learn how to cook things you like, and shop on a budget
- its cheaper, i can manage on £15 a week. My first year halls accomodation at Cardiff Uni was were only £2650 ensuite self-catered (07/08) so if you add 40 weeks of food thats £3350, pretty good value i think, and shared bathrooms were £500 less.
- you can eat whatever you want whenever you want, no missing the breakfast you've paid for. If you eat out you're not missing a meal you've paid for.
- you get to know the people you live with better, cooking together is good for socialising.
- your food is nearer - better for midnight snacking or revision cramming times.

We had a cleaner who cleaned our kitchen once a week so it never really got that messy.

Im not even sure it takes that much longer, you can cook pasta in 5mins if you want or just grab things out of the fridge.