In 2001-2005, my rent was $120-$160/mo in a low cost area of the US. The places weren't fancy but they were good enough and safe.

Tuition started around 4k/yr, but had worked its way up to 8k/yr by the time I graduated (which I thought was unaffordable).

I remember rent was $1800 per semester for my friends, and they split that 3 ways. So about $600 for 4 months, or $150/month. To be fair, it was a bit of a dump. But that's less you have to worry about when having parties. I had a slightly nicer single room and closer to campus with parking and it was $1200 per semester, or $300 month. This was slightly over a decade ago. I was curious and did a quick check - seems the single rooms are about $600/mo and I saw a 3 bed for $800/mo. Still really cheap considering all the inflation that happened over the past decade.

My apartment shared with three other roommates in that era was $750 (four bedrooms and a giant living room in a trendy neighborhood of a decent sized city). So $150 checks out.

I don't think $150 is out of the question over twenty years ago with roommates and a LCOL region.

Big state U is in the middle of nowhere, and in those years I was paying closer to $250, but I could see if you were willing to compromise on quality or quantity of personal space, getting that down to $150 without even hitting bottom.

Lol no it was $150. This was Gainesville, Florida and I split a horrible studio apartment with a friend of mine.

It was located in a low lying area and once after a tropical storm we had to wade through hip-deep water to get to class (the apartment itself was miraculously high and dry). Coming home one night I saw a little gator swimming along near me as I trudged through it.

After we graduated my roommate moved to Manhattan for an engineering job. His month’s rent up there was significantly more than he paid for a year in college.

I ended up moving to Portland, Oregon in 2007 and my first rent here was $550. Now in 2024, I’ve finally tacked on that missing 0 and my rent is now around $1500.

1985-87 my partner and I rented a just fine spacious 1 bdrm with a 10 min walk to the Math building on the East side of Gville for $200/month. We both had graduate school stipends. The 4 apartments all had cool tenants. Geckos in the stairwell. It was glorious, even w/o AC.

I ended up finishing at ASU. This highly educated ChE/Math imbecile took out a $12K student loan near the end because it was "free"[1]. Got to silicon valley and started learning the maths about house loans and income tax interactions and took a glance at the student loan interest payments (something like 6%? I don't remember) and freaked out. Paid it down immediately. Needless to say we advised the daughter different.

[1] The application was like: name, address, and school. Less than a page.