Students planning to move off-campus will soon have a new resource to help them make the right apartment choice.

As part of its proposed off-campus Web site, Associated Student Government will offer “Apartment Testimonials, Evaluations and Concern” surveys — a database similar to CTEC surveys — which will allow students to evaluate apartments in the Evanston and Chicago area.

The ATEC surveys will be online in the next week and a half, said ASG Technology Director Ben Cherry, a Weinberg senior. The database will post student apartment evaluations compiled last year, rating apartments on a five-star scale using criteria such as management, distance from campus, rent and overall upkeep, Cherry said. Students who filled out last year’s evaluations could also write their own comments and critiques.

“We collected 250 (responses) last year,” said Weinberg junior Adam Forsyth, an ASG off-campus senator who has been handling the technical aspects of the proposed Web site since last year. “We’re looking to get 1,000 or more this year.”

Forsyth said the responses will be archived each year so when students look up the address of an apartment they will eventually be able to read all prior evaluations.

Plans for the rest of the Web site are not yet finalized, but Cherry said it will include resources useful to off-campus students, such as information regarding street garbage pick-up.

“We’re doing it as a service to students,” Forsyth said. “It’s something to help them out, to make their lives a little easier.”

Forsyth added the site will have city utility contacts and links to information on tenant rights and landlord responsibilities.

“It will have anything students might not know where to find otherwise,” Cherry said. “It’s sort of an online extension of the off-campus guide that was created two years ago.”

Students can get a copy of the ASG off-campus guide, a 91-page booklet that includes legal and practical tips for moving off-campus and information on city resources, in the ASG office on the third floor of Norris University Center.

“Because it was in paper format, it was kind of a flop,” Cherry said, adding that he thinks the Web site will be more successful.

“It will be links to resources that are useful to off-campus students,” he said. “It’s not going to be another restaurant guide.”

The address for the new Web site has not been finalized, Cherry said. But students currently can access off-campus information at http://www.asg.northwestern.edu/services/offcampus.