I have a couple friends who were in EFS and say that a major part of the experience is to live in the dorms and meet your first friends of college. However, I am planning to stay in Haggett or McMahon, which are about $3,000 cheaper annually than the EFS dorms (Lander and McCarty). So it essentially ends up costing $4,000 to stay in a dorm for 4 weeks, which is hard to justify considering that I live a 30 minute bike ride from campus.
If I commute am I giving up the social aspect of EFS?
For the record:
I did commute for EFS. I really enjoyed my class (Comparative Literature 240) and the discussion-style class we had. None of my fall classes were nearly as engaging. However, choosing to commute meant that my EFS experience was pretty much just class. I was friendly with some people in my class, but haven’t met with any of them regularly after the end of EFS. Additionally, the UW treats EFS commuters very differently than those who stay on campus; they don’t even email you the list of events, like pizza nights.
Overall though, I think I’d do the same thing again. My parents were glad with the transitional period before I moved onto campus for fall, and the class got me used to a college-level workload and studying habits (although it’s easy to get a 4.0 in most EFS classes, you still have to put in a lot of work). And, frankly, it isn’t worth thousands of dollars to stay on campus for a month.