<p>I am going to be freshman next year at UT Austin for engineering and cannot decide if I should live on campus or off-campus. I am getting a scholarship which will make living off-campus really cheap (the scholarship is for off-campus only). On the other hand, living on-campus will cost me about 5k more per year, which will be difficult to afford (unless I take loans).</p>
<p>My main concern is whether I'll get sort of isolated from the campus if I live off-campus (the apartments are about 20 minutes away from the campus). I am a shy/not outgoing person, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to make too many friends by living off-campus. Or is it just in my head that you get isolated from the campus and can't make as many friends living off-campus?</p>
<p>Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.</p>
<p>They have private dorms just blocks from the campus that are all freshmen. Would oyu qualify if you did this? If so look at University Towers, and Dobie. You will get the same experience as an on campus dorm, and they are nicer. My d is going to live at University Towers. It is two blocks from campus and nicer than on campus dorm.</p>
<p>It’s just in your head. TONS of freshmen live off campus, and the vast majority of upperclassmen live off campus.</p>
<p>Now, where you live off campus does make a difference. If you’re living in Riverside as a freshman, you will be isolated from a lot of first year students, but there are still tons of students concentrated within a small area, so if you’re social at all you should be fine. West Campus is much more expensive, but it’s a lot closer and in my opinion acts as the hub of campus life.</p>
<p>But as long as you talk to people in your classes and perhaps join a Greek org or another campus organization, you should be fine in making friends whereever you live. There are organizations at Texas for EVERYTHING–you really have to TRY to not make friends.</p>
<p>I agree on the Towers and Dobie suggestions, but be warned that they do have a more of a party atmosphere than the on-campus dorms do (actually, pretty much every off campus dorm does). Towers rooms are nicer than those on campus (though significantly more expensive), but the property itself is a dump and literally reeks of beer. Dobie is much nicer as they actually just renovated the interior of the building this semester, but it’s rooms aren’t quite as nice.</p>
<p>You might also want to look at the Co-ops (especially Taos in my opinion). I’ve never heard of anyone living in one who didn’t like them, though perhaps that’s because the people applying for them are rather self-selective.</p>
<p>Residence Halls on campus offer more than a social life. We specialize in providing learning environments for students. See: [Division</a> of Housing and Food Service - LearnHere](<a href=“UHD Homepage | University Housing and Dining”>UHD Homepage | University Housing and Dining)
Students who live on campus have higher GPAs than students who live off campus. 60% of the freshman class live on campus.</p>
<p>It really depends where you live. It’s easier to make friends when you live on campus, for example to meet up and do things, however that’s not to say it’s impossible to hang out with people when you don’t live on campus. You just have to make that extra effort.</p>
<p>Also, if you can avoid it, don’t live in Riverside. really. It’s cheap because it’s not a safe area…</p>
<p>I would recommend living on campus for your first year if it’s possible, however if your particular situation does not allow it without a lot more stress /loans, it may be best for you to live off campus. (It also helps if your apartment is on one of the Texas Shuttle Routes)</p>
<p>Thanks for all the advice! appreciate it</p>
<p>so Chiasmus, you say that Riverside is not a safe area. how unsafe are we talking?</p>
<p>Yeah, I usually get a lot of flak for this from people living there, but it’s cheap because it’s unsafe. I lived there during the summer… and a friend of mine came back to find a bullet lodged in her wall.</p>
<p>Anyhow, crime statistics: <a href=“http://malford.ci.austin.tx.us/police/zipcode/zipcode/zip_2008.pdf[/url]”>http://malford.ci.austin.tx.us/police/zipcode/zipcode/zip_2008.pdf</a>
Try Zip Code 78741</p>
<p>It’s also cheap because the complexes aren’t luxury complexes and it’s farther away from campus, but personal safety is one of the main reason I would avoid Riverside.</p>
<p>The complexes themselves are usually pretty safe, with only the occasional break-in, but they are surrounded by low-income apartments and public housing.</p>
<p>Dobie, Towers, Castilian, SRD, Hardin House are all good choices for off-campus. On-Campus housing likes to scare people with the statistic that students staying on-campus graduate with ore frequency than off-campus students. This is one of those skewed statistics – the sororities often state that their girls graduate with a highre frequency than students not joining a sorority yet those houses are off-campus. There are 50,000 people off-campus going to UT and only 7000 on campus. The res halls on campus offer a social life but its up to you to make one for yourself – whereever you live, you’ll have choices to sociaize with your friends and attend events and functions – most of the off-campus dorms have RA’s and such – so I can’t agree with UT Housing and say that they are correct here - it all depends on what you compare it to.</p>
<p>Can you rank Dobie, Towers, Catilian, SRD, and Harding House from best to worst, whats the best off campus choice? I don’t know much about them. Are most residents older students (juniors, seniors)? Which is closest to the campus? Whats the best value, are their rates similar?</p>
<p>Hardin and SRD are all female, very similar and very nice.
Castilian, Dobie, Towers – that’s my order of preference. Castilian and Dobie are the same distance from Campus but Castilian is more central to everything. Price is about the same for all 3. All are primarily freshmen. Castilian though is the cleanest on the floors and has the best food!</p>
<p>If you’re an Engineering student, I wouldn’t worry about not having a social group. Most of the engineers that I know spend all of their time in study groups. So find yourself a study group, and bam! There you go. Don’t worry about off campus living. While I would suggest living on campus your first year simply because it takes the pressures of paying bills and going grocery shopping off you, if your scholarship makes it cheaper to stay off campus, go with that! Don’t throw away free housing just because you’re worried about being isolated.</p>
<p>If you make the effort to be a part of social life on campus, you can definitely make it happen.</p>
<p>theloneranger: so if the surrounding area is not safe but the complexes are safe, does that mean it would be safe to say walk from the buses going to riverside to my apartment at say 10 or 11 in the night? do the buses stop right outside the apartments, or a little away? if a little away, is it far enough to be risky to walk?</p>
<p>Live on campus for your first year. I lived on campus for one semester and then moved off campus and I have regretted it since then because I was no longer surrounded by other college students in the same situation that I was-people looking to make friends. As soon as I was off campus I was surrounded by groups of friends who had decided to move off and live together so it is harder to break into a group like that. There are definitely a few exceptions, those mostly being the private dorms that pair you with a roomate but this is pretty much like living “on campus”. It might be a hassle and not as nice as living off campus but if I were to redo it I would live on campus for a full year.</p>
<p>I never thought of SRD as being off-campus, because it was a true dorm and very convenient to the engineering building. I loved it there so much I stayed all four years! The swimming pool was wonderful, and the food was decent.</p>
<p>SRD is on campus. It just isn’t run by UT.</p>
<p>There’s a difference from being “off campus” in that you live in a building not run by UT and being off campus and living far away from the school. West Campus and many parts of North Campus are really on campus, they just aren’t on the maps and aren’t official. SRD is closer to much of UT’s amenities than San Jac is.</p>
<p>SRD is actually not on campus. It is considered an off campus dorm.</p>
<p>Officially, ‘On campus’ means that you’re on the University of Texas campus, not near it like West campus. Usually when official documents speak of living ‘on campus’ it means living on one of the University of Texas dormitories.</p>
<p>SRD is across the street from the official boundaries of campus, but it is culturally on campus and physically a lot closer to campus than some things which are considered on campus.</p>
<p>The baseball field is considered to be on campus. It’s on the other side of 35. No one in their right mind would walk there. You can walk to and from SRD very easily.</p>