<p>I am an incoming transfer into Cornell. I was looking at housing rates and then looked up craiglist apartments to find out that living in apartments will be 4-5 times cheaper. What are the advantages of living in dorms? Are those advantage worth paying extra $4-5ks per year?</p>
<p>Kind regards,</p>
<p>Where did you find apartments for 1.5k a year? That’s incredibly cheap.</p>
<p>Yea, I go to school at IC now and transferring to Cornell next semester. I haven’t heard of anywhere that is under $500 a month.</p>
<p>You get to meet more friends and be closer to a group of other transfers I think.</p>
<p>One challenge for midyear transfer students is to integrate themselves socially into the university at midstream. Other upperclassmen have already established their groups; even the prior transfer group will be less receptive by this time.</p>
<p>If you can find a dorm that is known to be somewhat social, and/or one that has a (relatively) lot of other new spring transfer students, that might be helpful. If you can’t, and wind up in a dorm where nobody socializes with you, then from a social perspective you might as well be off campus. Actually the right house off-campus, filled with fellow transfer students, might be better socially than that last dorm scenario.</p>
<p>The dorms are (mostly) closer to classes, closer to university eating facilities, etc.
Off-campus houses and apartments can offer more personal space, ability to cook for yourself, can potentially be cheaper if you share with multiple people, and may be closer to weekend entertainment.</p>
<p>I don’t think an apartment for $125 a month exists on Craigslist. Cheapest was $350 a month.
You may have either looked up the wrong portal for Craigslist or confused the monthly price as a yearly price, or some other detail.
Note: Most people make you sign yearly leases, so you have to pay for the summer months too.
You could probably get that kind of price if you were renting from a friend.
An apartment that cost that low will be very far from campus == uphill walk to campus everyday.
It will not include the cost of most/all utilities like internet.
The costs will probably build up to around 350-500 a month.</p>
<p>However, if you can get a cheaper apartment from your friend you mentioned in other posts for half the price, then the thing you’ll be choosing is the convenience of being close to classes and potentially most of you’re Cornell friends. If you ever gonna have to have a lab partner or any group work that requires working with another person, you’ll basically have to deal with having to meet up somewhere every single time.
Wherever you live off campus, you’ll probably start having to cook for yourself or eat at the venues that are close by generally all the time and stay on campus til you are ready to leave since it’s an inconvenience traveling back and forth from home. Unless you like cold weather, you may have to walk in the freezing temperature often, especially being tired after classes. Living off campus does allow you to be independent and not deal with so many people if that is a problem. You get to be with your small group of close-knit friends all the time.</p>