Besides word of mouth, what are some ways to determine if a school is more commuter than residential? Is it determined by the percentage of students living on campus? By whether the school guarantees housing for freshman? What specific statistics help make the determination?
There are a LOT of colleges where many students CHOOSE to live off campus.
If you put the schools you wonder about here…I bet folks will tell you if they are viewed as “commuter schools”.
Is this still his list? Because NONE of these are viewed as commuter schools:
@thumper1, yes most of those are still on his list and I know the majority are not commuter schools, with the exception of FGCU, which I was not as sure about.
We are taking a road trip to Florida for our spring break at the beginning of March and thought we may visit a couple of schools along the way. They are not necessarily schools on his definitive list, but garnered some interest from him nonetheless because of their location. Specifically- UNF, JU, FAU and FGCU. While the first 3 fall along our route, FGCU would be 2 1/2 hours away from where we end up and I didn’t know if it was even worth making the drive to visit. I have read some comments that all 4 of those schools are commuter, but was just curious if I could look up any statistics to confirm or refute their status.
FAU is a commuter school.
If you looks in the school’s common data set, section F1, or the Campus Life entry for the school on http://www.collegedata.com , you will see “Percent who live in college -owned, -operated, or -affiliated housing” for first time frosh and all students.
Non-commuter first time frosh tend to live in the campus dorms when available, although the percentage is much lower for upper class students at many colleges (many non-commuter upper class students live nearby in other housing).
However, some non-commuter students are what are commonly called “suitcase” students, who head back to their parents’ homes on many weekends.
Other than word of mouth, the best way to check to see if a college is a “suitcase school” is to pay a visit during a regular semester on a “college weekend”*. If the dorms/campus social/student activity seems dead because of absence of suitcase students going home for the weekend, it’s a suitcase school.
- Thursday evening till Sunday evening.
On the College Board Big Future site, look up your school and choose “Campus Life” from the left-side menu.
The first red tab shows average student age and number of part time students - older, part-time students tend to be commuters or those who are working and going to school at the same time, so not as invested in building a life on campus.
The second tab shows percentages of students living on campus. For large schools, this may just be the capacity of the dorms, and there are lots of students living very close to campus as well. Check that out on a visit.
Tabs three and four show activities and sports: this can give you some idea of how active a campus is, but again, this would be worth checking out on a visit since a standardized form can’t really give a complete feel for the uniqueness of a campus.
Any specific reason why he is looking at schools in Florida?
How about Flagler?
Would USF (Tampa), with a 22% part-time population and 22 year old avg student age, be considered a commuter school?
@thumper1, my son is very interested in any outdoor activities, but especially fishing and golf. So ideally, he would like to be some place warm to take advantage of the weather for a longer period of time during the year.
He has expressed an interest in schools near the water or near the mountains so that he will have many choices for outdoor activities on the weekends. We are primarily looking at either land or sea grant schools as he is leaning towards some sort of outdoor focused major- maybe marine bio/environmental science, or agriculture.
He loves Florida as we have visited many times over the years but we have found that most of the schools down there are too big, too small, or too hard to get into. He is a B average student with not so wonderful PSAT scores. He took the SAT for the first time this past Saturday so we will have more to go on once the scores come in next month. In making his list, we realize that there are not so many safeties on there.
And just for the record, UGA, C of C and Furman have come off the list and Appalachian State and University of New Hampshire have been added. UNH is probably a little too North for him, but it has almost everything he is looking for in a school so it stays for now.
@Trisherella, my husband and I both graduated from Flagler and while we loved our experiences there and think its a fantastic school, our son is looking for something a little bigger. However, St. Augustine is one of the stops on our road trip so we do plan to have him tour anyways. Sometimes kids think they know what they want until they see what other options are out there. You never know!
Thanks to the other posters for offering up advice and websites to check!
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga may fit the bill… it is often at the top of outdoorsy college lists; mid size. It has a bit of ‘suitcase’ population as most are in-state, but definitely has weekend energy. The location is perfect for those who like to hike, paddleboard, kayak, climb, and fish… UTC has a strong outdoor activity program and the city of Chattanooga is full of young outdoorsy people. UTC also has a club fishing team.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg05_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1647 says that 78% of frosh live in the dorms. So it is predominantly a residential school, at least for those who enter as frosh, but the 22% of frosh not living in the dorms (likely commuters) is higher than many other predominantly residential schools. Of course, it is also possible that older and non-traditional students are more likely to come in by transfer.
Helpful @ucbalumnus Thanks.
What about Coastal Carolina?
@oneundecided, thank you for recommending UTC. I got on their website and it did look great- lots to offer my son, both academically and socially, but when I looked it up on college data, I saw that the 4 year graduation rate is only 18%. That is really low. Makes me nervous. Otherwise, I see why you recommended it.
@thumper1, my older daughter’s good friend went to CC for one year and transferred out. She really disliked her experience there. My son, after listening to her stories, did not even consider it.
@VaNcBorder – yeah I see that looking at the data; but it is definitely on the rise… the 2012 cohort had 26% in 4 years graduate - one of which was mine! https://www.utc.edu/planning-evaluation-institutional-research/pdfs/factbook/grad-rates-by-year-07-16.pdf
@STEM2017 The percentage of all undergrads (not just freshmen) on campus at USF is only 21%.
You’d need to ask where they are living. Sometimes, the kids mostly live really close to campus and remain part of a student community. In other places, the students disappear into multiple neighborhoods. In either case, it’s not going to be quite the same as a small college where students live on campus after freshman year.
Does he like UMiami? His stats are a bit low, but if he applies early, you never know!
You need to be leery of just looking at statistics. “Off campus” technically may make one a commuter but at some schools those could mean adjacent private dorms or apartments that are closer to many buildings than some university dorms! Likewise many could live on campus but it empties out every weekend. One indicator for campus life could be the availability, or lack thereof, of student parking. When the school’s policy makes it easy to get a parking permit versus stating it is difficult for students to have cars on campus… Also look at parking spaces for dorms- they aren’t needed when students are not leaving weekends. Looking at weekend meal service may/may not help. Some know students sleep in on weekends and so change their hours.