Great place to live thats in Foggy Bottom and only a 5 minute walk to Ross. We live in a 2 bed/2 bath BUT with 3 people in order to make the rent cheaper. The third person (me) lives in the living room. It is very spacious and we separated the "living area" from the "bedroom area" with 2 large Ikea closets. I would recommend it to any medical student. A negative thing, however, is we get noise complaints when we have parties or 4 people over just hanging out by 10:30 pm on weekends. (This might be different if you have different neighbors.) There is a pretty decent sized homeless population nearby since Miriam's kitchen is across the street, but we have not had any security issues. You need a fob and key to get into the building, get through to the elevators, and to get into the apartment door.

Very safe with 24 hr front desk service and responsive management. Clean apartments with decent walls (I have not been able to hear my neighbors through the walls). No pest concerns. Functional appliances and heating with 24 hr repair services available onsite (just call front desk). Packages arrive safely.

Building is a great mix of long-term residents, young families, and GWU students (mostly grad). Lot's of other med students are here too!

The downside is that Foggy Bottom is very boring. There are no restaurants/entertainment nearby.

Columbia Plaza

Good apt. Good price

Pros:
- Huge unit
- 5 min walk to campus
- Cheap
- Liquor and Convenience store
- Great chinese food
- Very responsive maintenance team

Cons:
- Rats and Roaches (I live on the 6th floor and have only seen one roach in my unit but a friend of mine on the 3rd floor has had many and even had a rat run across her living room; it appears as though lower floors are more susceptible to these issues)
- Laundry machines are lowkey expensive
- Parking is a fortune
- The building has a frustrating approach to a/c and heat. Rather than offer both simultaneously to tenants, the property has set dates for which they offer exclusively one or the other. For example, from roughly April-October you will only be able to cool your apartment and will only be able to heat your apartment for the remainder of the year. While the cost-conscious logic behind this is relatively sensible, it results in quite a few periods of discomfort when the weather fails to act in strict accordance with seasonal expectations.

It's well maintained. Staff is responsive to maintenance request. 24 hour front desk so you can pick up your package any time (even at like 12 am when you get home after studying in the library). It has a small gym, which is nice enough. I do see some roaches but they are small and not too bad. My unit - a studio - is spacious and it has a walk-in closet. Water pressure is little weird when you turn in to shower but it's not too bad. It's got central heating system and they turned it from AC to heating little too early and because my unit gets direct sunlight all day long, it got little hot during the day for a while. It's got a convenience store, couple of restaurants and a cafe in the plaza which is very nice. The convenience store sells Asian food and as an international student from Korea, this was very nice.

I live in Ambassador building, which is the cheapeat apartment in the Columbia Plaza, but it's very nice. It's unfurnished, so I recommend renting your furnitures. I used Cort furnitures to rent my furnitures and I am very satisfied.

Moved here for law school, and I have found its location and proximity to GW Law School to be ideal. Easy to walk home for lunch after class and then return to campus for afternoon/evening work. The neighborhood is very safe, and there are plenty of GW Law Students inside the buildings that can help facilitate friendships before school starts. I wish there were more food options around the area, but there are still 3-5 good places. If you are looking for a party or bar scene, skip this location. If you are looking for a quiet space to get work done and live safely, I recommend Columbia Plaza. Rent is reasonable, and after I put in maintenance requests things get fixed soon after. I had one water line break that poured water into my apartment, but the staff went above and beyond in fixing it.

Can't beat the convenient location

Overall I've enjoyed living here. The units are spacious, but the buildings are fairly old. I had some issues with water leaking, but management was fairly responsive and got it taken care of. The main issue I have is that sound carries very easily through the heating/cooling units, so i can hear everything my upstairs neighbors do in their bedroom. Overall it's not the fanciest or most modern place, but its location is great.