There was a pro football player on a sports show talking about when he was in college at Berkeley. I guess most of the players move out after a year but this guy chose to live in his dorm for all 4 years. He had some fabulous room in the tower of some dorm and his feeling was why would he want to move out? He loved having this big room (single), the meal plan, everything he was used to (probably did his laundry in the team locker room.
I think it is nice to have a few options.
^ Most students don’t live alone off campus,
, by “alone” I was tying to say “not with parents”.
^ ‘off campus’ apartments or rooms or houses are closer to the main parts of campus than the dorms.
In that case I would like whatever is closer.
^ Groceries can be delivered,
But has to be ordered
^ and a crockpot or Instant Pot can be a great time saver, with food available 24/7
That’s same for dorm, isn’t. But dorm also has hot dinner ready every evening without worrying about it.
Dorms don’t have food available 24/7 and many do not allow cooking in the dorms. My daughter’s main cafe was open from 7-7:30. She had practice at 5:30 am and often past 7:30 pm. There was also a deli and a pizza place open later. Although all the freshmen dorms were suites with kitchettes, cooking wasn’t allowed. Microwave, fridge were there, but of course you had to go to the grocery store to get food for those too. They weren’t allowed most appliances (no crock pots, no hot plates).
She now lives just past the freshmen dorm village on the edge of campus, in a house with a full kitchen (her house is nicer than mine). She finds it easier to live in the house than the dorms. She can eat on campus whenever she wants but can also cook whenever she wants. Choices.
At my sons’ college there was an international student (some form of ‘princess’) that lived in the on-campus hotel for four years, apparently with her bodyguard.
At this school, housing is guaranteed for freshmen and sophomores, but almost everyone moves off after freshman year. Some of the off campus rental housing is closer the central campus than the freshman dorms. I feel there’s an amazing amount of pressure and panic in the early fall about finding housin for the following year – 9-12 months early.
^ This is a common problem particularly at State schools. I heard this mentioned when we visited UVA and UNC and have heard from some parents that this causes stress as kids need to find sophomore roommates in Oct/Nov of frosh year when they are still finding their way socially. At least in schools where kids normally stay on campus sophomore year the kids will be able to come back second semester and have a month or so to figure things out for their housing. This was one reason why my daughter chose Georgetown over UVA.
Also, this is a big problem here in the UK also where everybody has to go off campus 2nd year (other than at Oxbridge or Durham). What often happens in the UK is that kids never mis with other types of students as they tend to room with similar kids all three/four years.
When preparing the potential list of applications, I insisted on at least two years guaranteed and preferred schools that guaranteed four or at least showed the majority of students living on campus all four. Skidmore has a good transition program…first year doubled with five to a “pod”, second year single if you chose, still five to a “pod”, third year apartment with your own kitchen (my D housed with four total) and fourth year again an apartment but the newer, larger ones, four total again. In the apartments everyone has their own bedroom and there are two bathrooms, living room, large closets and a decent sized kitchen. The apartments are on campus which is small so walking distance to everything. They provide different meal plans and the cost is considerably lower than the first year AYCE dining plan that is mandatory. Slowly but surely my D is learning to cook and clean for herself and is learning that not everyone lives by the same standards regarding cleanliness lol.
Both of my nieces attended UMassAmherst, stayed in the dorms for the first two years and then moved to an apartment for junior and senior year. It really takes you away from the “college” feeling. They had to have their own cars, they left campus between classes, worked off campus, etc. It can be a bit crazy at UMA so I get why they wanted to be off campus but that would not have been a good fit for D, housing-wise.
Both of my kids lived off-campus for their junior and senior years (at different universities).
I’m glad they weren’t pressured to move off campus as sophomores (both universities guaranteed housing for at least two years) because that would have meant having to deal with the complexities of making off-campus housing arrangements while they were still freshmen.
But I think that both the dorm living experience and the off-campus living experience were good for them.
Dorms and their associated dining halls are great places to meet people, make friends, and get used to college life. But you live in a very crowded space, especially if you’re in a double, and the meal plan is often an awkward fit with students’ schedules (so much so that my daughter, who was at a college where students living on-campus were not required to have a meal plan, didn’t sign up for one in her second year and paid cash to eat in various places on- and off-campus instead).
Living in an apartment with apartment-mates you chose, a real kitchen, and some living space other than bedrooms, is considerably more civilized than dorm life. And if you’re an upperclassman who already has friends, the fact that you don’t meet new people in the place where you live is not much of an issue. You also learn more responsibility in this setting – for housework, paying the rent and other bills, making arrangements with the landlord for repairs and other issues, arranging for utilities and TV/Internet, sharing chores with your roommates, dealing with the issues that arise if someone wants to move out of the apartment, and cleaning the living daylights out of the apartment before you move out so that you will get your deposit back. It’s good preparation for the (often shared) apartment living that’s typically comes after graduation.
And the process of choosing an apartment can be educational, too, in some cases. It wasn’t for my son, who was simply asked by a friend to fill an empty space in an apartment, but it was for my daughter, who researched buildings and landlords; visited several apartments with her prospective roommates; learned, along with her friends, that the rather large group of people who wanted to live together would have to split into two smaller groups; and then participated in another joint decision about the actual choice of an apartment for herself and her two roommates.
Depending on the college and the community, living off-campus does not necessarily mean being isolated from college life. Both of my kids lived in apartments that were as close to the center of campus as many dorms, and both continued to be very involved socially with their college classmates.
One problem that I would not have anticipated, but that turned out to be an issue for both of them, was food. Neither had a car, and neither of the off-campus apartments was within walking distance of a supermarket. Therefore, they ended up eating on-campus or eating food from takeout places or convenience stores. They didn’t cook much because it was too difficult to obtain anything to cook. And they did not save money on food by living off-campus. But this was a small negative that didn’t cancel out the many positives.
^ "One problem that I would not have anticipated, but that turned out to be an issue for both of them, was food. Neither had a car, and neither of the off-campus apartments was within walking distance of a supermarket. "
My son encountered a similar problem - he has no car and was dependent on joint shopping trips with his flatmates. My son is a good cook and likes to eat healthily, but his flatmates can’t cook and prefer junk food (microwave pizza and popcorn chicken! Yuk). They eventually worked it out but it did cause some friction for a while.
^Yep. Having to rely on a roommate for shopping trips isn’t the best scenario. With a child who also doesn’t like to cook, a lot of stress can be reduced by just paying for the meal plan if they’re living close enough to campus to use it. Especially at a school that has some fast food/take out options included in the meal plan.
^ Agreed. Fortunately, my son and his 3 flatmates generally get along and have much in common. My son took the initiative that he did not want to pay 25% of the weekly food bill on stuff that he felt was unhealthy and overpriced. They quickly compromised to split the basic groceries (milk, bread, cleaning products, etc) equally and pitch in for weekend dinners which they take turns cooking. He also invested in a bunch of campus dining dollars so he usually has lunch and the occasional dinner at the campus dining hall.
One of my daughter’s apartment-mates did exactly this for a year. I believe it was his parents’ suggestion, which he liked.
But this option is not always available. It was not available at my son’s college, where the rules were simple: If you lived in a dorm, you had to have a meal plan. If you did not live in a dorm, you were not permitted to have a meal plan. Period.
This is obvious, but I’ll mention it anyways. Not all dorms are created equal.
One kid was in an old school traditional dorm with two to a room and shared bathrooms for the entire floor. You really get to recognize, or know, everyone on your floor.
Our other kid was in new dorms. Two to a room but with a small privacy partition. Shared bath with one other room. She says lots of people on her floor kept their doors shut and it wasn’t nearly as communal as one might imagine.
This kid of ours reports that some of her friends were in apartment like dorm suites the first year, two kids, each with their own private room, kitchenette, one bath for both of them to share. She said one of her friends said to her the first year, “I haven’t seen my roommate in three weeks!”
That’s because that style of room was essentially two singles sharing a kitchenette and bath.
Usually when I hear “dorms”, I think of the old style, and I remember what a big community experience it was. Then I’m reminded of my other kids dorm experience.
YMMV!
Some people don’t have the hunger gene. They just starve until feel dizzy and then eat instant ramen or chocolate bar to refuel, unless they know their pre-paid meal plan will go waste if they don’t eat the readily prepared hot meal.
My daughter’s boyfriend had a ‘lunch only’ meal plan but made the most of it since lunch was from 10:30 until 3. He often went to have a late breakfast at 10:30, a lunch at noon, and back to the dining hall at 3. As long as he entered by 3, he could keep eating.
At my daughter’s campus, the only dining hall was near the dorms but pretty far from the academic buildings in a spread-out campus. She hardly ate in the dining hall at all.
Second and fourth year she has been in a very nice (certainly much nicer than our apartment in Brooklyn) on-campus apartment. Four bedrooms, two full baths, a well-equipped kitchen across the counter from the living room, and a laundry room with washer and dryer. In our apartment I am the dishwasher and the laundry is a couple of blocks away at the laundromat. Lucky her!
Third year she shared a room in her sorority house for the same price as the dorm room she had freshman year, but no meal plan required.
After three semesters in a standard dorm, I moved off campus with friends to substandard rental housing but we each had our own bedroom and cooking for ourselves was much cheaper than the meal plan. I assumed my daughter would do the same, but no. She did spend two summers off campus in sublets, one in a run-down student house a couple of miles from campus and the other in an apartment right next to campus built for students. Both were much, much cheaper than a room on campus.
I found JHS’s post interesting. I, too, attended a college with a strong residential college system and where 90% of the kids stay on campus all four years eating all their meals together. Professors were able to eat with us as well, but I wouldn’t say there were that many that did so on a regular basis. My older son lived on campus his first two years and in a house with three others his third year which was a good experience for him. But it turned out it was mostly seniors in the house, which the landlord decided to sell, he didn’t organize a house share with anyone else, and wasn’t allowed to move back on campus. He ended up scrambling after the end of a summer internship to find an apartment where he lived alone - which I didn’t think was good for some one who is naturally not very social. He did hang out at one of the computer clusters a lot that year I think. He lived on cereal or takeout. 
Younger son had zippo interest in living off campus or cooking - though he likes cooking and is happy to do it in the summer. He rarely eats out.
My D lived on campus for 4 1/2 years (she was in a 5 year program and came home the last semester to student teach). She was an RA after the first year.
Middle son stayed on campus for his entire tenure as well. At one point, he thought about moving off campus but D, who went to the same school, talked him out of it. He later agreed that she was right - he didn’t want to share the cooking. He also had no desire to be an RA, so I wound up paying extra for him to have a single room.
S17 is at a school which recently changed the requirements to make students live on campus for two years unless their families live within a certain distance. His school does offer commuter meal plan options. As of now, it is his intention to live on campus all 4 years. He’s in a performing arts major as a tech and spends many nights in the theater. He doesn’t want to worry about getting home. He gets along well with his roommate and doesn’t mind sharing a room. As the youngest of 5, he’s pretty flexible.
Depends on the school. Campus cultures et al vary. Definitely think the freshman year is best in the school (vs off campus private) dorms. After that it depends on various factors.
Eons ago when I went to UW-Madison I lived in the dorms all four years instead of commuting (including a bus transfer…hour or so each way)- an off campus apartment was not an option and they would have been further than dorms. Friends were in various dorms (I preferred different buildings/locations to theirs). Some I knew lived many blocks from campus in the student slum areas (old houses converted to apts- no real slums in Madison otherwise). I was lucky to not live at home- terrible atmosphere…
Fast forward to son’s era. He was not from the Madison area and commuting was not an option. Since he could not rent an apartment (parental cosigning at any age) until he turned 18 he spent two, not the one he wanted, in the dorms. Most are of adult age, however and campus culture included living in one of many apartment buildings built next to campus, unlike my day. When he got his group together for a 4 bedroom 2 bath apt there were to be 5 guys- two sharing a room (finances I guess). Son added a transferring HS friend as the 6th and roommate without telling us- we thought he would have his own room. The next year he had his own one bedroom unfurnished one. Both were within a block of some campus buildings.
A change of how students do things in different generations. There are some private dorms next to campus and much new construction of both public dorms and private apartments in recent years. I see pros and cons to each form. I would not eliminate any school for the living situation if the academics are a good fit. As a parent I would be flexible based on how things are done at the school. UW and Madison had a lot of apartment information and city regulations, plus student grapevine info that made the process more reassuring.