Is it cheaper to live in your own apartments, do your own grocery, etc. with a couple of roommates or is it cheaper to dorm on campus? asking about states like new york, massachusetts, etc.
It’s pretty much always a better value for your money to live off campus. Normally you can get your own bedroom for 12 months for less than the price of 9 months on campus
@philbegas is correct (your own bedroom if the market isn’t too ridiculously expensive). I would add, however, that there are trade-offs. One of the biggies is how rent works. On campus, the cost of your housing remains the same, whether all of the beds in your dorm room are filled or not. In an off-campus rental, the total rent is the total rent, and most rental agreements will make the renters jointly and severally liable for that total rent. If you lose a roommate, it’s more out of your pocket until you can back fill. Also, you are dealing with separate bills for any utilities not included in your rent (internet, water, etc.). That’s a little extra work to figure out which (responsible) roommate is going to handle that if a property management company isn’t involved that does that. There are other pros and cons, but you are basically trading cheaper rent/food for less convenience/possibly more hassles. However, learning in the ins and outs of renting while in school is a great way to transition to the post-college world when renting is the alternative to living back at your childhood home. I recommend 1-2 years of on-campus housing (to set a foundation to meet people and get that “on/near campus” experience - one of the reasons why many schools require freshman to do on-campus housing their first year), then off campus the rest of the time.
Also it not always a strict $ decision. Consider the time,cost and hassle of the commute. It varies by school and location. Many find the additional room and privacy well worth the inconvinence.
Outside of a very few places like Manhattan, off campus is almost always a better value.
Also, though, consider the cost of getting to and from campus, to and from the supermarket, to and from the drugstore… Will you need a car? You’ll need to factor in the cost of insurance, gas, and possibly a parking space.
It depends on the individual school and their costs, plus the housing market in the area.
You bring up New York. For example, at Columbia, on-campus housing costs $8,500-9,500 per year for 9-month housing. Meal plans are $2300-2800 per term depending on the kind of plan you get. So let’s take the case of a first-year student who’s paying $8,500 for on-campus housing + $4,600 for two semesters of a meal plan. That’s about $13,100 for room and board for 9 months, which comes out to about $1,456/month.
While you could maybe find a place where you could pay around $1,456 a month for rent and food costs if you shared an apartment with roommates, did your own grocery shopping and cooked almost all of your own food, it wouldn’t be anywhere walking distance to Columbia’s campus - probably at least 20-30 minutes away by subway. You’d also be missing all of the amenities of a residence hall, which are things like resident assistants, shared common spaces for studying and socializing, meeting rooms, security, and college-sponsored events. You’d have to spend the time meal planning, grocery shopping and preparing your own food, rather than just running to the dining hall and grabbing some.
Now at NYU, the residence halls for first years range from $8,000 to $17,000 a year, and the cheaper spaces are triples and less common. All of the non-triples start at around $13,000 a year. So let’s say a first-year student will pay around $15,000 for their residence hall. The min required meal plan is $5,140 per year, so your total comes out to around $20,140 for 9 months, or about $2,237/month. When I was living in New York I covered all my monthly expenses (rent + food + fun and games) in around $2,200/month, and that was living with only one roommate, so I’m pretty sure that a college student could find a place that’s cheaper to live than NYU. However, again, it wouldn’t be in the Village and would require a subway ride to the university. (However, at a school like NYU - where about a third of students are in-state and a significant portion of those students are from the city itself and perhaps commuting from home, and where the university doesn’t have much of a traditional campus - that may not be too much of an issue.
So it depends.