My NYU Housing Experiences

Once a student has been accepted into NYU and chooses to live in one of the NYU residence halls, they are part of a FYRE residence hall. FYRE stands for First-Year Residental Experience. This means that the residential hall puts on special events for first-year students to get to know each other, the school, and the city!

In my first year, I lived in a Brooklyn hall called Clark Street. My Residence Assistant (RA) was super awesome. Each week we met up and had hall snacks, where all the students on the floor would get together and eat and chat. We really got to know each other this way. On Sundays, there was a sweets trolley. An RA from the building would go around with a trolley full of candy and snacks as a fun way to get ready for the week ahead of us.

In addition to these weekly events, RAs will put on other types of events. One of the events I greatly enjoyed with my RA was getting to go to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for free!

My RA had posted a flyer saying, “Let’s go to the MoMA! Bring a hall buddy. We will be visiting the MoMA and getting lunch.”

I brought a hall buddy (she lived on the 2nd floor) and we went to the MoMA. That day, there were only a few of us going, but it was indeed a fun time. We saw so many cool pieces of art and took many pictures. The best part was, we didn’t pay for any of it! The MoMA is free to visit with a college student ID, but my RA also had funds so we could eat lunch. The group stopped by a sandwich shop where we got sandwiches and ice cream!

I highly recommend getting involved with your residence hall this way, it is so much fun. Plus, I would never have learned what a cool place the MoMA is without my RA.

Each year NYU Housing puts on an event called NYU Flurry. Flurry is an ice skating event. NYU Housing rents out an ice rink (when I went, it was in Central Park) and we get to skate around for hours. It was so much fun, especially since I haven’t gone ice skating in such a long time! There were people who were so good at ice skating that I was mesmerized watching. Furthermore, there were also students who didn’t know how to skate, so it was funny to watch my friends keep falling as they learned to ice skate.

I can’t wait until NYU Housing puts on Flurry again. It was a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience and I want to do it all over again.

Each year, NYU has a talent show called UltraViolet Live (UVL). Each hall presents a list of contestants (there’s even a team for the commuters)! In each of the residence halls, there is a separate competition to narrow down the contestants and then a final talent show in NYU Skirball. Lady Gaga actually performed representing NYU Third North residence hall when she was a student!

If you’ve got a talent and want to show it off, you can enter UVL and compete for a prize. There are acts for DJing, acting, dancing, singing, comedy, instrumentations, juggling, bands, etc! There is so much to watch. For the audience, UVL is a great way to show support for your talented NYU friends, as well as cheer on those from your residence hall. Oftentimes, you can hear groups of students whooping in the crowd for the ones that they support most fiercely. Using their phones, the audience can vote for their favorite contestant.

Residence Halls are a great way to learn and meet the NYU community. The First-Year Residential Experience is made for first-years to get to know one another and the city while having support in a new place. Plus, there are cool events you can go to, such as Broadway shows, city walk-throughs, etc. Even if you don’t choose to live in a residence hall, these events are for all NYU students, and you can enjoy them with friends!