The practical compromise, and the one we recommend most often. The M1 to EPFL and a mainline station that puts Geneva under an hour. Rents run below Lausanne proper, the high street is genuinely useful, and there is a real town rather than a campus.
Landlords in Renens ask for the same file as anywhere in the canton: a debt-collection extract, proof of income, and a guarantor who lives in Switzerland. Two of those are impossible before you arrive, which is why flatshares and private landlords are the realistic route from abroad.
Your deposit is capped at three months of net rent — up to CHF 3'300 at the top of the range here — and it is blocked in your own name, not the landlord's. How the deposit works
We co-sign leases so the file gets accepted, and we search the market when our own rooms are full.