<p>So I wanted to start a thread to ask those of you who have already attended college/are currently attending, and what your opinion is on the topic in the title.</p>
<p>So I am already in college and I live at home with my mom and dad. I have MANY friends who decided to live on campus away from home and a very few amount of friends who decided to stay home. So my question: is going away worth it?</p>
<p>A little background: my mom and dad do help me, but they can't pay for my entire education (and I would never EVER ask them to.) However, I receive zero financial aid; with my parents' combined salary, I do not qualify for anything. So, I decided to say "screw loans" and to commute from home. Now I'm wondering if maybe I should have thought about it more?</p>
<p>This sounds silly, but I feel like maybe I gave up a really great opportunity by not taking the "traditional" college path of going away. I am currently a junior and I will have absolutely no debt upon graduating AND I plan on attending graduate school, so I am saving tons for that. But I still can't shake this feeling that I should have gone away.</p>
<p>Any opinions? I'm sure I will get the response that "having no debt is better than getting the college experience," but is this true? For those who HAVE graduated and accrued debt, what do you think? Was it worth going away and experiencing what you have?</p>
<p>There are a lot of variables at play. How much debt would you have accrued going away? Just how important is the “college experience” to you? What is your relationship with your family? What are your grad school plans? I think that generally, if the decision was commuting versus accruing 35k+ in debt, graduating debt free will serve you better in the long run in terms of financing graduate school, buying your first car, etc. However, if the debt load was smaller - say, around 10k, then perhaps dorms would be worth it, if you know that it’d be something you’d grow from as a person.</p>
<p>I am a Freshman and I made the decision to commute so I would not have to take out loans - my aim has always been law school and I know that in this market - having as little debt as possible is critical in finding financial stability post-JD. </p>
<p>My parents are immigrants and I was raised with different values than a lot of my friends - my family is very small, all of our relatives live overseas, so we kind of stick together as a single unit and help one another out. I am also incredibly introverted and the idea of having a roommate kind of makes me anxious - I need privacy/solitude in order to recharge and whatnot. I could, in theory, live in an off campus apartment - but that would mean doling out 700 dollars a month to live with three other roommates in a seedy (but still ridiculously expensive) neighborhood in Boston. I couldn’t rationalize the cost.</p>
<p>Living in a dorm does teach you a lot of important life lessons - learning to be respectful of others, cooperation, conflict resolution, etc (all of which are usually absent in only children especially). But there has to be an upper limit on the expense of learning those life lessons - and a lot of times, huge debt isn’t worth it. </p>
<p>No one can really answer this. Some love dorm life and others can’t wait to move off campus. If you are enjoying your college experience then you made the right choice. Second guessing at this point is a waste of energy. What your friends did doesn’t matter. What matters is what was the best option for you. I know you are hearing all the great stories but what you are not seeing is the price they are paying in the future. I am not just not talking about the financial cost but about the overall quality of life after school. Think of what you could do with what you saved by living at home. Travel, having money for grad school, taking the dream low paying job, being able to get an apartment, money to date, money to invest, etc.</p>
<p>If you believe what others post here then you are having the traditional college experience. Most claim more students are commuting to school rather than living in dorms.</p>
<p>Would you regret the 40-50K debt for living in a dorm or off campus? Most would say yes. That debt can place limits on future life choice. In your case, it could impact the grad school decision. That debt and the future grad school debt could mean having to live at home and not being able to accept a job that requires relocation.</p>
<p>I had a friend that borrow to live in a dorm rather than home. She also borrow to attend the in-state public school. As a result she had to live at home even though she had a decent job. There was no way she could consider jobs outside commuting distance from her parent’s home. She did regret it. She did enjoy it at the time.</p>
<p>Yeah - it is important to note that we are subject to a lot of media which unrealistically portrays college life. Don’t bankrupt yourself (and your cosigners) chasing an experience that is largely fabricated. </p>
<p>Hi there. I am a freshman living on campus and i live 10 minutes away. I would like to live at home next semester and maybe longer. I received a very helpful scholarship so my parents were willing to spend the extra money for me to have the “college experience”. Except now that I’m here, I don’t think its that great. Sure it teaches you about being on your own and how to deal with people but you can easily learn those things by living at home. At some point you have to live on our own but why waste the insane amount of money to do it now. Yea the “college experience” is for some people but if you are happy then that is all that matters. I am not happy living on campus and so I am trying to convince my parents to let me live at home. Do what feels right for you and not what society says is the right path. Hope this helps!</p>
<p>You are very fortunate to not have debt at all even living at home. I also will graduate with no debt (my entire time at school is cheaper than 1 year away at a more prestigious away from home school and I’d still get no financial aid if I went to the more expensive school), but I’ve been blindsighted from the fact that probably a majority of the friends I’ve made will be graduating with debt, even those still living at home.</p>
<p>The flip-side:
Now’s about the time of year when I see all my go away Facebook friends (especially the new freshmen) posting all the crazy things they’ve experienced in college and how great college life is. UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, USC, Stanford–I know those are big, expensive, college names in which many of my HS class of '14 friends have already gotten internships, gained leadership roles in organizations, met plenty of wonderful people / built large networks…</p>
<p>All in perspective:
Staying home to a commuter college, you won’t find the full elegance of the above mentioned items, but there is still a great chance of living a fulfilling college life if you’re mindful to take advantage of what your college has to offer. Join an active organization to meet new people. Make free time to travel with them, to explore new cities and visit other colleges while you’re at it.
That said, a social life requires free time to do things. I’m busy to the brim with a mouthful of engineering courses and a job with some social time scheduled in each week. I could’ve traveled with my organization several hundred miles to the south to hangout in Southern California this weekend, but trade-offs need to be made regardless of attending school at home or away.
I’m thankful of this thread reintroducing the idea that I’m saving a whole lot of money. I remember everyone back in high school complaining about the debt they are going to have to pay off before heading out to the glamorous college lives that fill up Facebook (is it really that elegant or are they filtering their experiences?). Eventually we’ll reach the post-college life and I am a rising engineer that will start out debt-free and a year earlier–I’ll see how things will go from there.</p>
<p>Of course, it also depends on what the commute distance, time, cost, and convenience happens to be. If your parents live across the street from the school, commuting from there is more convenient than if they live far enough away that the commute is an hour or two (unpredictably based on traffic jams) drive with no good public transit choices.</p>
<p>I did live on campus in college. I had a scholarship, so I was actually required to live in the residence halls. I did enjoy my college experience, but if I had to go into significant debt to stay on campus, I would say that it is not worth it - especially not after freshman year. In your first year, living in the residence halls is pretty fun; you meet many of your friends there, and first-years tend to be very involved in res hall life. But at most colleges - even where upperclassmen tend to stay on-campus beyond the first year - that seems to dissipate towards sophomore year.</p>
<p>In my college, most juniors moved off campus so junior and senior year, there were few upperclassmen still living on campus. I lived in a residence hall as an RA, so although I enjoyed my role as an RA, I felt isolated from my upperclassmen friends who were largely commuting to school. Social life moved off-campus to Atlanta-area venues, but since I didn’t have a car I feel like I missed out on a lot of that life. Especially in my senior year - when I wasn’t an RA, but lived in a mostly freshman dorm - I felt lonely a lot of the time when I was in the res hall because none of my friends lived there.</p>
<p>I worked in res life at a college where the vast majority of people lived on-campus all four years. Even here, social life on-campus seemed to die down a lot after the first year. I ran 5 upperclassmen halls and my RAs sometimes struggled to get their residents to come to events; they found more success hosting off-campus events in the city, because that’s what the upperclassmen wanted to do. For the most part, their res hall was just a place to live, not much more. In fact, two of my res halls didn’t even have floor lounges or anything.</p>
<p>But trust me - it is way better not to have the debt. I have about $35,000 in loans from grad and undergrad, which is a completely manageable amount. The loans come due in March, when my grace period is up (I just finished my PhD in August). Under IBR on my current salary as a postdoc, I will fork over roughly $300/month for the next 10ish years (more or less depending on where my salary goes). $300/month is a LOT of money that could do a lot of other things - that’s 1/3 of my rent, or my entire grocery bill for the month, or about 10 months’ worth of gas in my car, or most of my Christmas shopping…Every. Single. Month. Now I borrowed the money because I needed it, but I think I would be kicking myself if I had borrowed it to live on campus for what was ultimately a pretty underwhelming experience when I had the opportunity to live at home and save big time.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus brings up a very important point - a lot of my friends commute via car, and the expenses of gas + potential repairs/general maintenance end up being around the same as just living in an off campus apartment with roommates. It is easier for them to just forgo commuting altogether. </p>