Fact finding mission. LA vs ATL

[mmbt0ne]

As you may remember from my thread in Student Life (lol, jk) my gf is pretty smart. She has since been accepted to Emory med school.

Well, she also turned out to be smart enough that she just got in off the wait list at UCLA. For everyone who hasn't studied med schools, UCLA is one of the top schools and also one of the hardest for an out-of-state applicant to get in to. Unfortunately, coming with that acceptance is a very short deadline for deciding. It was this Friday, but she was able to get it pushed back to next Friday b/c she just got her letter.

On the surface, this is a very easy decision. UCLA is a better school and offers better opportunities. However, with the late news, there are also some downsides. For one, we are already under contract on a condo here in Atlanta and would be out a couple grand in earnest money if we pulled out at this point. Of course, there is also the whole, we both grew up around Atlanta and all our friends and family our here angle. And of course the cheaper cost of living. I'm not too worried about finding another job as a city of 12M or so probably has something I can do.

Anyway, this thread isn't so much about that (however feel free to comment) as it is about trying to find out some stuff about LA. For one, we'd have to have housing close to UCLA secured in the next month to allow time to move and neither of us have much clue about where the good/affordable areas are.

Also, please include any interesting personal anecdotes about moving away from all of your family and friends, or regretting not doing something like that.