I) 89 Chestnut
Testimonial by Mohd Mustaqim, 1st year electrical engineering student who lived at Chestnut in his first year.
This residence is the furthest UofT residence. Previously the building is a hotel but now it has been modified to become a hostel. It takes about 20 minute to walk to campus – engineering complex, add another 5 minutes if you want to go to arts and science buildings – from Chestnut.
Meal Plan Choice
Well, here is my recommendation. If you are asked for meal plan, I would suggest you to choosethe 330 plan because it is flexible. Roughly it has about 10 meal swipes per week, which can be used at on campus cafes such as Subway, Pizza Pizza, Second Cup, and other coffee shops. As an engineering student, I have a tight budget, thus I spend most of my time at the campus and the 400 flex dollar offered by the 330plan comes in handy – and it saves your cash money! It is up to you guys. If you are not a busy person – as in some arts & science students - and spend most of your time at Chestnut residence, you may take the unlimited meal swipes called ‘Carte Blanche’ (more expensive than 330plan). Here, you can go to dining hall any time with unlimited access, but it doesn’t have flex dollar. I strongly suggest sponsored student to go for the 330 plan, as it is cheaper and the more expensive carte blanche plan will literally leave you with no extra money for the rest of the year.
What’s Good
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The food! So many choices and it’s tasty! Plus, if you are a Muslim, they will have many choices of Halal dishes and you won’t be hungry (no need to eat vegetarian food anymore!).
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Nice & comfortable room. It has its own bathroom.
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It has cool facilities such as Gym, music room (piano and a drum set).
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It is near to the shopping center called Eaton Center - equivalent of Suria KLCC at Malaysia. Eaton Center is just behind chestnut building!
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It is near to the Nathan Phillips’ square. Just walk down the building and walk another 30 meters to arrive there. During winter, you can skate at the skating rink which is made from frozen pool.
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It is 2 minutes walk to a mosque and Halal restaurants - just across the street!
What’s Not So Good
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Too far from campus (approximately 20 minutes walking distance)
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Much more expensive as compared to other UofT residences (approximately 1100$ monthly)
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Since this residence holds up to 400 students and it has 27 storeys, sometime you will feel annoyed when it comes to fire alarm situation or you are in an evacuation situation. Most of the fire alarms are false-alarm! Somebody switches on the alarm trigger and think it is fun… So let’s say if you are on the 26th floor, you will need to use the stairs to descent all the way down to the ground floor. No elevator allowed during fire alarm!
II) Victoria College
Testimonial by Mohd Safwan, 1st year chemical engineering student who lived at Victoria College in his first year.Walking through this residence, you can feel the medieval ambience of British Empire in late 18th century. This college has one of the oldest buildings for University of Toronto which is old Vic. Stop talking about history, let’s get to real topic. Victoria College is part of University Of Toronto which accommodates a few Art and Science faculties. However, these faculties are mostly centered on philosophy and theology fields. As most of students who will be taking engineering, you have to walk through Queen’s park to campus for 15 minutes approximately depending on weather. During winter, it will take about 20 minutes as you have to balance yourselves to walk on the icy road. In fact, you experience embarrassing moment stumbling on slippery road at least once.
This college has several residences such as Burwash Hall, Rowell Jackman, Margerat Addition and etc. They share one majestic dining hall which is pretty much the same as the scene in Harry Porter sequential films located at the center of Vic territory. This dining hall provides variety choices of food and caters to the student’s need especially for those who are vegetarian and real-Muslim. For your information, it offers two options of meal plans which are full meal and partial meal. It is advisable for those Engineering students to select the least meal plan with more flex dollar you can use later because your schedule is going to be miserably tight. So if you are big on asthetic, especially old victorian architecture, then you might like Victoria College a lot.
III) Innis College
Testimonial by Arif Makhdzir, 2nd year electrical engineering student who lived at Innis College in his first year.Innis is one of the best residences out there, but it is also one of the hardest to get into. One of the criteria of admission into Innis is your highschool – or IB, whatever – grades, so it is really competitive to get into. The biggest plus point for Innis is that it offers single room for first years, which is something rare among UofT residences; in fact, all rooms in Innis are single rooms. Innis residence is an apartment style building; each suite has four single rooms, a common room, a kitchen, and a shared bathroom. Usually they will pool people with common background into a suite; in fact, they will ask you to fill a form describing your sleeping habit, religious background, specific concerns that you have, etcetera etcetera, so don’t worry too much about ‘incompatible’ suitemates. As for my experience, I lived with an Indonesian, a Pakistani, and an Iranian last year. All of us don’t drink, we eat similar food (halal), and we have similar religious background – so the residence officers did their homework well.
Maybe the major drawback of living at Innis is it doesn’t have a meal plan. So yeah, you have to cook. As for what I did last year, sometimes I cook and sometimes I eat at restaurants nearby – in the end it worked out fine. Since nowadays the sponsors don’t give the 60-40% plan anymore, it doesn’t really make money sense to live at Innis, as the $6000 total residence fees translates into $750 per month and you still have to pay for food. Having said that, you won’t get a single room apartment for such price anywhere in Downtown, unless of course if you share a room with someone else. Not to mention, other UofT residences are even more expensive even considering the fact that they have meal plan, as you can always save a lot of money by cooking once in a while.
Furthermore, Innis is placed right in the heart of the St. George Street, so you can’t get anything better than this - location-wise. It is 10 minutes walk to engineering complex, 5 minutes walk to arts & science buildings, a stone throw away from the Robarts library, right beside the Varsity Athelics Stadium, and near to most of other university facilities. I would say Innis is the best UofT residence out there, but of course probably I am biased…
