Hello everyone! We are relocating to Indianapolis from California (Davis) starting July 1st, 2026 and I will be working at IU Indianapolis. We’re looking to rent a 2bhk apartment or a townhouse starting July 1st (budget ~1300$). What are the nicest places to live in and around Indianapolis? What to expect in terms of pricing? Looking for a family- and kid-friendly location. Thank you in advance for the recommendations!
I’m debating transferring from IUK since I currently live with my parents, and most of my grants cover tuition there. I only pay around $1k a semester out of pocket for tuition right now, so moving away honestly seems like a huge financial jump.
Housing + food alone around Indy seems like it could easily be $1,000-$1,500/month. Then add tuition, gas, insurance, phone bill, car payment, random life expenses, and even just wanting to do fun stuff sometimes, and it feels like total monthly expenses could hit $2k-$3k+ pretty fast.
Are most students:
- working while in school?
- getting help from parents?
- taking loans?
- using scholarships?
- or just surviving paycheck to paycheck? 😭
If you work while in school, how many hours a week are you realistically working? It feels like you’d almost need 25-30+ hours/week just to make it work, and balancing that with classes, studying, networking, meeting new people, school activities, and still trying to actually enjoy college seems really hard.
If anyone at IUI had to take a test at the Testing Center, they closed 15 minutes early. Please speak up and file a complaint against the testing center! The staff never sent out any emails to me or any other students about closing 15 minutes early. This is just lack of communication and very unprofessional. Me and other students expressed our concerns about it. All of the staff were rude, unapologetic, lack of empathy, and unprofessional. They closed early because the tests have to be graded manually, due to the Canvas outage. They should had at least had the decency to sent out emails about it. This is horrible lack of communication.