Is there a good site where I can compare the % of students living on campus?
Used my school list on a site. It made it sound like ALL OF THEM were primarily commuter schools. I’m dubious of that.
These U.S. News sites may be of help:
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/most-on-campus
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/most-off-campus
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A high percentage of students living off campus does not make a school a commuter school. Many large publics only have housing for freshman or for a limited number of upper class men so many students live in off campus housing that is near the campus. They aren’t commuting in the traditional sense. Sometimes off campus apartments can be closer to classes than dorms are.
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There are three categories:
Living on campus in university owned or controlled housing
Living off campus nearby in private housing a short walk or bike ride away
Living in their parents’ home and travelling a longer distance to campus.
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Those % numbers can be very misleading. Some schools with attractive/affordable nearby off campus options can tilt the numbers downwards. Say a group of full time students rent a house right next to their college?. If the college owns the house (and some/many colleges do…) they are not considered commuters but they are if they rent it from someone else (very common around some/many colleges especially those located away from super affluent areas). In practicality you wouldn’t consider those students commuters either way and the same extends to the school as a whole provided the school has plenty of in house options available and the student body comes from far and wide… The second is important as you can have a “suitcase” school with a large % residential number but everyone deserts the campus on the weekend in contrast to one where upper classmen tend to rent from X-landlord and are part of the community…
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The stats in a college’s common data set section F1 combine the latter two categories.
Fortunately, they do list for both frosh and all undergraduate students. Frosh are much less likely to be in the second category at most colleges, so the frosh percentage in the dorms may better reflect how residential (versus commuter) the college is.
However, at some colleges, some residential students have “suitcase” habits – heading back to the family home every or most weekends.
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Yes. It is only the third category that are really commuter students.
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@me29034 the schools I checked on ARE largely flagship state schools. Thanks for the explanation of how that happens.
@TomSrOfBoston YES! That last category is what I think of as commuters. My uncle was a “suitcase” resident at his college.
Do any of these schools have exceptionally low residency rates (I.e. The students lives with parents at home nearby)
ASU
UNM
ARIZONA
TEMPLE
MARYLAND
UNLV
LBSU
HI-MANOA
OREGON
PORTLAND ST.
Is there a place where the data is collated in 1 place?
I just plowed through the data sets. Once I got hang of it, was easy (just changed school in Google). How big a grain of salt should I take the % on campus data?
Taking freshman residential rate into account, here’s my top 9 (LBSU is essentially commuter)
Temple
UNLV
Hawaii-Manoa
UNM
Portland St.
Arizona
Oregon
ASU
Maryland
Would it be worthwhile to go back, and account for overall undergraduate residency rate?
Hop everyone had great Easter! Finally got moment to take total undergraduate residency rate. Lost another school. Current rankings:
Temple
Hawaii
Oregon
UMN
ZONA
Portland St.
ASU
Maryland
I had TOTALLY forgotten, until reminded of it in another thread, that PSU is basically all commuter and non-traditional students.
May I ask what the point of your list is? Are these schools that you plan to apply to?
Do you have any particular major in mind? Are there any financial constraints?
I’m just trying to understand what your ultimate goal is.
@SoofDad yeah, these school,are my candidates for applications. I’m looking at Area Studies/Foreign Language as a major and I have a 529 that my dad has been maxing out for 15 years.