"I'm shocked myself at the prices," said Carla J. Chaplin, a rental consultant for the Dewolfe's Cambridge real estate firm.

"One landlord had some families living in six two-bedroom apartments for eight to nine hundred a month five years ago," Chaplin says. "Now, they're up to 1,400 and that's happening everywhere. I don't know where regular people are supposed to live anymore."

Graduate students also have the option of obtaining one of the 2,300 rental apartments within one mile of Harvard Yard that are owned by Harvard and run through Harvard Planning and Real Estate (HPRE). But these apartments are rented at market value, with no discount for Harvard students.

"For graduate students [HPRE] is a point of contention because they charge the fair market price," says Lisa L. Lauterbach, a co-president of the Graduate Student Council. "HPRE feels that subsidies are at type of financial aid they aren't obligated to distribute."

And the many who can't tolerate another year in dorms or who can't afford an apartment near Harvard must move further away.

Many land in Watertown and Allston, but some spread out to as far away as Jamaica Plain in Boston, or even to Fitchburg.

The Graduate Student Council administers a discount MBTA fare program for these far-flung commuters, and this year, the number of enrollees had doubled as more and more graduate students must commute from their distant homes.