As requested in http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21035109/#Comment_21035109
…a new thread. When you look at colleges is it a plus that housing is provided for all 4 years? Or required for all 4? Or one where everyone moves off campus after the first year?
I would imagine it varies by the student and the off-campus housing situation in the local area.
A traditional student looking for a residential college experience, or attending a college too far to commute to when living with parents or other relatives, probably wants on-campus housing at least the first year, and may prefer it all four years, particularly if the off-campus housing is difficult to find or otherwise undesirable.
But a traditional student who lives nearby with parents or relatives may prefer to commute to save money, and a non-traditional student who lives nearby may prefer to stay where s/he is due to other constraints (e.g. spouse/family) and may not be interested in what s/he may consider to be a too-rowdy dorm of 18-year-olds. A non-traditional student who relocates to attend a college may not want the rowdy dorm either, but some colleges offer on-campus housing designed for non-traditional students.
Also, nearby off-campus housing may include both ordinary apartments and student-centric housing (sororities, fraternities, off-campus dorms not run by the college, student cooperatives, etc.). The latter may resemble on-campus housing more than the former.
Back in my day, I remember my parents telling me that if I didn’t want to live in the dorm, I might as well come home. I thought it was horrible, but now I can see where they were coming from. I’m not sure if I will place the same restrictions on my own kids, but there is something to be said about living in the dorm and being connected.
When our kids were looking at colleges, it was a plus that the college required/guaranteed on-campus housing for first year. Freshman year is demanding enough for most kids without their diverting time and energy to commuting, or parking, or cars, or obtaining good rental housing. Especially at the type of intensive colleges that our kids attended (UChicago and RISD) it was important to have close access to facilities, including recreational, libraries, studios, and labs – as well as other resources including health clinics and advisors.
After that, we left the decision to the kids; one stayed on campus until senior year (though “on-campus” his junior year was spent in London). The other stayed on campus until junior year. It all worked out.
We looked only at schools that guaranteed housing for 4 years. It was that important to us. Part of college learning–the truly unique, once in a lifetime part–is the the late night academic and philosophical discussions you get into with students from other academic disciplines. That rarely ever happens again in your life.
I hate when the kids want to move off campus – invariably a number of new factors pop up like - I need a car, I want grocery money instead of the food plan, oh my lease is for the whole year even though I won’t be there for the whole year, oh I need a security deposit, now I have to pay rent for them each month as well as their ‘university’ bills. Oh gosh my roommates set a couch on fire/punched the wall (put whatever here) - which seems somehow to take place way more often in off campus apartments. It is a PITA logistically for us parents IMO.
Very much depends on the college. At some colleges, the way the campus is laid out and the availability of off-campus housing means that living off campus is not substantively different than living on campus; if the college owned dorm that has suites sharing small kitchens is immediately adjacent to a privately owned apartment building that rents primarily to students, I don’t see a real difference.
For colleges in expensive areas, guaranteed housing can be important. My son is applying to a couple of colleges in London and the fact that they guarantee housing for international students was key given how expensive London is.
Guaranteed housing for all four years, perhaps with an option to move off campus senior year IF desired (but not necessary to move off), seems the best arrangement. Vassar, Skidmore and Wesleyan’s on-campus apartments provide a good model of gradually increasing independence.
When looking at colleges, we considered a lack of four years of guaranteed housing a serious minus but not a complete deal breaker. No guarantee for freshman and sophomore years was more concerning.
A campus community is important. Living together on campus helps build that.
Also, I think going away from home for the first time is enough independence without dealing with a landlord, bills, cooking, car, etc. College is a nice “in between” stage as young adults transition into fully independent adults.
Everything depends on the individual student, too. Kids are not all the same. Some kids already have lived in a boarding school or have taken care of their family or otherwise practiced more independence at a younger age, or like to cook their own food, or for some other reason prefer an apartment.
For us it was purely financial. If we could swing the dorm cost, then we would have liked the option of on campus dorms all 4 years. That still allows the student the option of moving off campus if they choose. There is something frightening about committing to a college that will not guarantee housing. Talk about a last minute scramble to become a commuting student in a strange city.
I preferred “on campus housing required for everyone all 4 years” schools to those that guaranteed it but did not require it, because I too love the egalitarian aspect of it. As noted in the previous thread, the wealthy prince lives on the same hall as the poor farm kid and the middle class kid and they all eat in the same dining hall, etc. I like that all options cost the same and “niceness” of dorm/apt is determined by lottery/seniority.
I am aware that kids can still self-segregate - and often do - but that’s somewhat limited at a college where everyone is on campus for the entire 4 years.
I’ve also seen my friends, parents of kids at our flagship deal with housing…on campus is required for the first two years then almost everyone moves off because it’s cheaper, there’s no RA or whoever’s supervision or rules…but it causes problems especially with early lease/roommate decisions.
I can see the positives of learning to deal with a landlord and cook and all that, but IMO these are skills just as easily learned in summer internships or after graduation. Cooking isn’t rocket science and most students I know have their parents deal with renting a house for them or whatever they’re doing off-campus, or the parents cosign the lease, whatever.
As pointed out in the other thread, it’s also true that “on campus” and “off campus” blend at many schools. College of Wooster and Miami U own lots of little houses around their towns and those are considered “on campus”, Temple U owns dorms, but also apartment buildings that are very similar to the apartments owned by outside companies, at similar price points.
Depends on the kid. One of mine went to major OOS flagship where most, but not all, freshman live in university dorms and then, after freshman year, move into private apartments. He loved having the big dorm experience as a freshman, but then couldn’t wait to get off campus with friends as a sophomore. We appreciated that there were plenty of furnished buildings off campus which, even taking into account the 12 month lease, were cheaper than dorms for 9-10 months. Having an apartment simplified the summers he stayed in town to work. He ate in the dining halls sometimes, at the off campus rate, but also learned to manage a monthly shopping budget, to remember to pay monthly utilities etc.
The other kid is at a residential LAC and will live in a traditional dorm for three years and then hopes to get into one of the coveted senior apartments. Many LACs we visited had some sort of apartment housing for seniors – on campus apartments owned and maintained by the college – so that seniors could prepare to “launch.” They can cook, but they don’t have to, as they can still get a dining hall plan which provides flexibility.
Each worked/is working for that kid, and that is what mattered to us.
We did look whether four years of housing was guaranteed. However, both D1 and D2 lived in the dorms the first year and then moved off-campus the second year. Two different public flagships. A major factor for both was to save money by living off-campus.
I like places that have the guarantee but no requirement. There are enough things for kiddo to be worrying about without scoping out apartments. However there’s a chance that kiddo might have a developmental leap forward and decide that he wants more autonomy and privacy, so it’s nice to have apartment-type living as an option.
Kid cooks for himself when he’s home during the summer so I’m not so concerned about those skills. I am vaguely concerned about the food shopping skills, and remembering to shop for food when finals are impending and term papers are due. But if he has a few years to adapt to the rhythm of college life I can see he could be ready for it.
My DS is my one and only and I have been accused of being overprotective.
son goes to Sewanee so there is no choice - dorm all four years. But you change dorms every year and that shuffles your neighbors.
After my experience with DD, we are evaluating housing options more closely for DS in the event he doesn’t stay close to home. Housing options are much more critical if your child is going far away to school. (Which to me means you can’t drive down and bring them back in a day.)
Don’t assume that living on campus means your child will always have a place to stay during the school year. Some schools close dorms for holidays and all students must leave. If so, you’ll have to bring them home or find some place else for them to go. It can cost hundreds of dollars more to fly back to school the Sunday after Thanksgiving rather than the Saturday.
Don’t assume that living off campus will be cheaper. Look at apartment listings. Figure out how you’re going to deal with furniture if you can’t get a furnished place. Find out which utilities are included in the rent. I’ve been shocked at how expensive off campus housing is for my DD. Part of the issue is that she has to be on a bus route as she won’t have a car. Still, it’s cheaper to do this than to get her a car/gas/insurance. There’s landlords to deal with, utilities to pay and a myriad of other things that some students just aren’t ready for their sophomore year of college. Social lives and study groups get mixed up if everyone has to move off campus and it may not be as fun as when they all lived together.
Figure out what you’ll do if your child wants to study abroad. Some dorms will allow you to only be in there one semester. Most apartments require a year long lease.
In hindsight, I wish we’d chosen a school with guaranteed housing all four years, but not required. The option would have been there to move off campus if we’d wanted it. IMO, the ideal is a school that has “progressive” housing such that freshman year is a traditional dorm, sophormore and junior year maybe in a suite, and apartments available for senior (and maybe junior) year. But still all are university owned and operated.
Usually you can save money when they move off campus.
My D can live on campus for 3 years and since it is an urban university I preferred that she live on campus as long as possible for security and proximity to campus reasons.
She spends about $50 a week on groceries which is much cheaper than meal plan.
Next year she will need to live off campus but it is also advantageous for her because she can get an internship in the city without added living cost because she is already paying for the apartment the whole year.
Our bill from the university will go down and the rent will be spread out over 12 months instead of housing being due in full for each semester.
I expect it to be slightly less expensive.
My S might go to a school where the on campus requirement is 2 semesters and there is only suite style housing there which is expensive.
But there is lots of pretty affordable off campus housing close by, some furnished which is a good deal.
Both of my kids looked at residential LACs. For D1, her school requires students to live on campus for 3 years and s since the campus is the center of social life, most students live on-campus for 4 years. The college does own some townhouses and apartments that aren’t traditional dorms.
At D2’s school students can apply to live off-campus for their senior year and the school can turn down the application. The college is pretty explicit that the number allowed to live off-campus is directly related to the school’s estimate of their ability to fill the dorms. (i.e., if their enrollment projections show excess capacity they will limit the number of applications that will be accepted),
I went to a college where housing was guaranteed (and all but required) for four years. 95%+ of undergraduates lived on campus in dorms. I loved it. My wife couldn’t stand it. She was part of the <5% who lived off campus, starting in the second semester of her sophomore year. But she was still required to have a contract to have some meals on campus, and she was happy with that. (In no small part because that’s how we met.)
When our kids were looking at colleges, I assumed that was the best system. Both of our kids wound up at a college where dorm housing was guaranteed for two years and required for the first year, but the vast majority of kids moved off campus by their third year. (As a practical matter, housing was guaranteed for all four years at the time, because so few upperclass students wanted it.) No one, or hardly anyone, was “commuting” to campus. The students lived in apartment housing within easy walking distance of campus, and there were university shuttle buses, public transportation, and some large buildings had private shuttles, too. University police patrolled most of the area where students lived.
Both my kids hated the dorms, and moved off campus after one year. They vastly preferred living off campus – they had much nicer space for less money, they preferred their own cooking to eating in the dining halls, and they really appreciated having quiet space to come home to, which was not the case in the dorms. Campus was still the center of their lives, and they spent most of their waking hours (and some napping hours, too, I’m sure) there. There was no social cost to living off campus.
(I will say that the college changed its dining hall policy when my younger kid was a senior, to make it hard for on-campus students to invite off-campus students without meal plans to eat with them in the dining halls. That had a clear deleterious effect on campus culture. A club sports team that had been an important part of his social life split into on-campus and off-campus factions, because they could no longer all have dinner together after their practices. It was a stupid, short-sighted thing for the administration to do.)
Having so many students living off campus encouraged local landlords to invest in the neighborhood, and student-friendly businesses to establish themselves there. That was great for the university. There was much less of a town-gown divide than the somewhat similar city where my college was had. My kids did have to sign 12-month leases, but except for one kid/one summer they wound up spending their summers in the city where they went to college, so they got the full benefit of the cheaper housing. The one summer a kid didn’t live in his apartment, he was able to sublet his space for about 75% of the full rent, so we still saved considerable money on his housing.
My kids’ college is clearly trying to build enough on-campus housing to guarantee housing for four years, and perhaps even require it. I think they are doing that because they recognize that many applicants and their parents have the attitudes expressed here. But they aren’t close to building that much additional housing. My kids clearly preferred living off campus, and seeing how their experience played out I wondered why I ever thought living on campus was so great.
Having 4 years guaranteed is great. Being able to move off campus is OK, but in some cases it doesn’t make financial sense. Some areas are just too expensive (I’m looking at you Palo Alto).
I’m all for four year residential colleges. I feel kids have their whole lives to pay rent and mortgage. Plus I’ve seen situations with my nieces and nephews where after settling into an apartment with classmates something goes wrong and in my nieces case she ended up leaving school and not being able to sublease her space in the apartment. Of course this could happen in a dorm as well but it is by semester so at least half can be salvaged. Sadly she paid rent for rest of year and through summer. In my nephews place they had a break in that resulted in a lot of headaches. I’m sure apartment life is fine for some and maybe ours will want that too. I’m pretty gung ho on dorm life.