hey hey - albany 1L here,
yeah, if u go to the school's website,
www.als.edu, then go to prospective students, click on Housing, the info on the dorms is somewhere there. Specifically, they are called the University Heights Association Dorms (UHA Dorms). Its about 600 a month and includes everything, electric, cable, laundry, etc. i chose to live off-campus, i pay 625 and it includes everything except cable and electric. If u cant get here till 3 weeks before class, i would suggest living in the dorms. Most of the good areas are taken up by June, so in august you will be forced to live in the "student ghetto" - which refers to where a lot of the SUNY Albany students live. FYI - SUNY albany was the nation's number 1 party school a couple years ago, so living amongst the undergrads really is not gonna help with studying. Another reason u might want to consider the dorms is the parking. Parking in albany sucks. like really bad. I went to undergrad in manhattan and its almost as bad as that. If u live in the dorms, for an extra 20/month u get to park ur car in a nice garage. This is great in the winter when it snows like every other freakin day. Take it from someone who has parked on the street for the past year, and has had to drive around for as long as 20 minutes to find a spot. Also, if u park on the street, u leave ur car at its own risk. My car has 3 dents in it cause people dont know to drive/parallel park.
To the poster who wants to know about the social life - it is live and kickin here. perhaps too much. There are bars on every block filled with students every weekend. There are bars that mostly SUNY kids go to, but the law school and med school also have their fair share of bars.
I love going to school here, the prof's are more than willing to help if u have a problem, and i get along with almost all of my classmates.
Feel free to PM me if u have any questions.