<p>My son has recently sent us a form to cosign for him to rent an apartment with friends in similar departments for his second year in college. As a parent, I am a bit hesitant to this. Although it will save us about 7 grand, his education and safety comes first.</p>
<p>He said he will be more focused in the rental apartment with people of similar courses and there will be less distraction to his studies. I still worry that he may sleep too much and miss lectures or the new place may not be as structured as the dorms.
What are your experiences?</p>
<p>At my S’s school it is very common to go off campus sophomore year. He is doing very well in his apartment. It is close to campus and he rides his bike or takes the school shuttle bus to class.</p>
<p>Both of my kids – at separate colleges – lived in dorms for the first two years and in off-campus apartments for the last two years. It worked out just fine. It would probably have been just fine if they moved off campus a year earlier, too. They just didn’t happen to make that choice.</p>
<p>Dorms are not structured. Often, they are absolute zoos, where it’s never quiet and studying is almost impossible. The quality of life in apartments is often much better, as long as the landlord is a good one, the roommates are responsible, and the student has already made a reasonable number of friends. (You tend to meet fewer people once you move off-campus.)</p>
<p>Moving off campus to an apartment is just part of the growing up process. They learn to manage bureaucracy, pay bills, live with roommates, negotiate housework, etc. All while mom and dad pay (at least some of) the bills. If you will save money in the process, then I say, let him have a little freedom and make the decision. My D moved off campus for her junior year and it has been fine - even finding someone to sublet while she does study abroad.</p>
<p>We said Yes. My son moved out his sophomore year. My only complaint was that the apartment they rented as not very clean. We got their first and helped clean it - made me feel better. My son really had a hard time with all the noise in the dorms. Kids coming in late a lot of nights and being very loud. He gets better sleep in an apartment. Teaches them how to pay bills, etc.</p>
<p>I was and still am against it even with my 4th one moving off campus. They are going to have to be dealing with these issues of rent and meals and utilities all of their lives,most likely so why not just enjoy university housing while they can? </p>
<p>But they all wanted to move out of nice university settings into dives . They all had their reasons, and it’s all just static in my ears… I think they would have been better off in the dorms and they were moving out because it was the thing to do at their schools. And when things go wrong with slum lords, it can be a disaster. The same with roommates. We had an easy go of it with the exception of one year when the pipes froze at one of my kids’ apartments and the city shut down from an early snow storm. He fortunately still had his paperwork in for a dorm room, so he ended up in a quad and was one out of two guys that did not drop that semester in that house because it was too much of challenge to recover from all of the problems of living there.</p>
<p>So I am prejudiced. I hate the extra paperwork, the extra responsibilities and all of the other stuff, but I give in and up on this. Good luck to them all.</p>
<p>I moved off campus my third year. I was thrilled to be saving money and able to cook my own food (I was not a fan of the school cafeteria food).</p>
<p>I moved off campus in sophomore year, as is the norm here. I don’t regret it at all, and truth be told I think the things that go wrong tend to just be learning curves - learning to deal with landlords, pay bills, budget, negotiate housemate relations, and deal with maintenance problems when they arise (a collapsed kitchen floor is my personal favourite). At least when you’re living with friends then usually someone knows what to do and so you’re not on your own. </p>
<p>At the age of 18/19/20/whatever he is perfectly old enough to get himself up out of bed in the mornings. If he can’t manage it now, it’s a really rather sorry show.</p>
<p>Younger D moved into a two bedroom apt when she was a sophomore. We helped her move in & out. We cosigned for the apt.
Her roommate worked out very well but they were both fairly quiet & although it was a pretty nice apt, she moved into a huge old house with 4 or 5 other people the next year that has a view and she has the biggest room in the house. It is also closer to the middle of campus than the dorms and it is closer to the center of town. We didn’t need to cosign for the house.</p>
<p>We also helped her move into her house, but considering how many more trips with stuff that it has taken, Im wondering how many people it will take to move her out!</p>
<p>Oldest D had single room in dorms & senior yr lived in a 2 bed townhouse condo that the school had just purchased.</p>
<p>Save $7000 and he gets to assume more responsibilities?
Sounds like a no brainer!
:)</p>
<p>I moved off campus after my freshman year and that is because it was expected. Back in my day you were considered a bit strange if you kept living in the dorms after your first year</p>
<p>It was our rite of passage to get an apartment or house with several others and learn to manage our bills, food, etc</p>
<p>Whether students at a particular college tend to move off-campus or spend all four years in the dorms is something worth considering during the college selection process. It’s also worthwhile to find out whether on-campus housing is guaranteed for all four years.</p>
<p>My kids had no objection to moving off-campus, and I had no objection to them doing it. So it didn’t matter to us that they both chose colleges where on-campus housing was not guaranteed for all four years and where many people move off-campus at some point.</p>
<p>But for some other families, these might not have been good choices.</p>
<p>We discouraged D from moving out sophomore year because she would have been living alone and we didn’t think that was the best choice. Even though she had a single on campus, we felt that she was more likely to find “community” on campus.</p>
<p>For her junior year, she and a friend found an apartment that they are really happy in (it’s MUCH nicer than I remember student housing being!) and she will stay there for her last year as well. The only concern is that she needs to schedule commute time and needs to keep an eye on the weather. There are several students who rent apartments in the complex, and they occasionally carpool to campus.</p>
<p>I moved off campus my 3rd year. It was a godsend. I could sleep at any hour I wanted, without fear of stupid freshman running up and down the halls. </p>
<p>No one wakes you up in a dorm to go to class. No one checks in to see if you’re studying. What is this “structure”?</p>
<p>School I attended everyone lived on campus all 4 years but they had on campus apartments for juniors and seniors. Our D’s school requires students to live on campus all 4 years but has a similar set up for jr/sr years. They had no interest in schools where everyone moved off campus after freshman or sophomore year, which was fine with me.</p>
<p>Agreed regarding the structure. That’s more dependent on individual campuses rather than whether one’s in a dorm or not. </p>
<p>LACs like the one I attended did have a bit of the handholding aspects as I found when I ended up serving as an unofficial messenger to an underclassman roommate who failed to show up for a week of classes with a Prof I also had. </p>
<p>As for moving out, it was actually strongly discouraged at my college as they preferred keeping us all on campus for “community” reasons. Nevertheless, some folks…mostly juniors and seniors who had compelling reasons to move off campus did so.</p>
<p>I didn’t talk mine out of it per se, but did point out that away from campus, she’d have far less social interaction than she does now when she can just wander over to a friend’s room. Like CPT, I just didn’t want to deal with leases and security deposits and getting back and forth to campus. </p>
<p>D’s campus, though, is one where upperclassmen still live on, so it’s not weird to be a sophomore or junior or senior in the residence halls.</p>
<p>We encouraged our son to spend a second year in the dorms, but in hindsight it would have been fine - better, actually - for him to move out after his freshman year. He’s in an apartment now and loving it. He’s doing fine academically, and regularly texts me for recipes.</p>
<p>Many dorms are primarily freshmen, and freshmen can be noisy and rather wild. Your son is probably correct that he will be able to focus better in an apartment. </p>
<p>I think you should allow him to move to the apartment.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my college’s strong encouragement to stay on campus for all-4 years was cited one reason why they felt the college’s campus culture felt too much like a sheltered bubble. They said while it was nice for freshman or even sophomore year…by junior year…they felt so impatient to move on to an off-campus apartment. </p>
<p>One person who said this was an older alum who said even after living the reality of renting apartments in Brooklyn post-college, she would have much preferred that to the “bubble” she experienced at our college.</p>
<p>Personally, I didn’t really mind…though a large part of that was having never stayed in a freshman only dorm and living in a school where stereotypical freshman highjinks weren’t tolerated among students. </p>
<p>On the other hand, after visiting and staying in some of my friends’ wild all-freshman dorms…if I had attended their schools…I’d prefer to get an apartment by the beginning of the next semester. </p>
<p>Freshmen in such campuses…especially males do live up to the stereotype of running wild and being exceedingly disgusting. In one dorm, someone defecated and left their mark in the dorm’s mailroom. Yecchhh!!!</p>
<p>Has he checked into the availability of apartments owned by the school? That’s usually a very safe option as the university has jurisdiction over the residents. I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, but make sure that each student has an individual lease with the landlord for only that student’s portion of the rent. If one of the students moves out two months into the lease, you don’t want to end up responsible for the departing student’s rent. I believe that leases for university-owned housing are often structured that way.</p>