<p>Is there anyone else out there that just found out that after freshman year you have to move out of dorms and find other housing alternatives? The University says that's the way it is and there is nothing they can do about it, not enough room.</p>
<p>Depends on the school. Lots of schools do guarantee housing for upper classmen. At least some of the college guides tell what the guarantees are. It’s my impression (perhaps wrong) that it’s mostly urban campuses that do not guarantee 4-year housing.</p>
<p>This varies from campus to campus and is definitely something worth checking out before applying to colleges.</p>
<p>I think that the urban/rural pattern annasdad mentioned is generally valid, but there are exceptions. My daughter’s school, Cornell, which is certainly not urban (although Ithaca calls itself a city), only guarantees housing for two years. Practically everyone lives off-campus or in Greek houses as juniors and seniors, and some of the sophomores do, too.</p>
<p>Off-campus living is not necessarily a bad thing, especially at a school where all your friends are doing it, too. Both of my kids liked it.</p>
<p>Is there a college town? Living off campus can be less expensive than the dorms. Depending on the area.</p>
<p>Housing availability varies a great deal from college to college. This advise comes too late for OP, but this factor should be on a family’s college comparison matrix. You would not necessarily rule out a college that only has room for freshman, but it’s good to know the scoop.</p>
<p>For us campus housing availabilty was a big factor. DS was hoping to go OOS, and most colleges that interested him were an airline flight away. I just didn’t see how it would be practical to arrange apartment living from long distance. Also I liked the idea of a campus where the majority of students live on campus. </p>
<p>For every college of interest, I checked % on campus (easily available on Peterson website). Some colleges, especially state school, have only 25-30% on campus residents. I also checked the policies… some colleges guarantee dorm/apartment availability on campus. Others have lotteries etc. </p>
<p>OP - Although I never wanted DS to do the apartment thing, there can be advantages. Often they are cheaper (even with full year lease) than dorm. And food would certainly be cheaper. Also, there is possibility that the “dorm mountain” junk will never need to come home again.</p>
<p>Probably too late for the OP, but one way to stay on campus to is apply for an RA position.</p>
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<p>It’s only a problem if you have to do it for freshman year.</p>
<p>After that, the students do it themselves. During the school year, they arrange to rent rooms or apartments for the following year.</p>
<p>I found out after S decided on his school that they don’t provide housing to upper classman. But, after talking to uppperclassman parents found out that it isn’t a big deal. all the kids find apts in the area.</p>
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<p>I’d just like to point out that this can mean different things. A commuter school where the majority of students live at home is hugely different from a college town atmosphere where the majority of students rent housing in student ghettos near the campus. I attended a good OOS school where most students lived off campus by junior year, but it certainly felt little different from a big school with spread out university housing around campus.</p>
<p>“I’d just like to point out that this can mean different things.” - Definitely. That % is just a starting point for further research. There are all sorts of variations - we even learned of some schools where off campus apartments were closer to classes than the outlying dorms. </p>
<p>The problem doing an apartment is that you have more stuff. The apartment hassles for students from other states without a car can be mitigated by continuity on leases (either staying in same apartment OR ability to move straight from one to another), renting furnished apartments, and/or helpful roommates with closer families. </p>
<p>Apartment living was a complication that we preferred to be controlled by student preference, not forced at sophomore year. Like most college search factors, it was not a deal breaker. But it was considered.</p>
<p>D1 went to a school where they only guaranteed housing first year. She was just telling us that she thought it was a nice transition for her. By living in an apartment at a college town, she had to make sure her rent and utilities were paid on time, she also had to learn to deal with landlord on fixing things in her apartment. We paid for most of bills and landlords were generally pretty nice to college students, but it prepared here for getting an apartment on her own in a big city. She is taking most of her college apartment furnishing to her new apartment, so no money wasted. When she lived off campus she also had more space and didn’t have to share a bathroom with 20 other people. Because most upperclassmen lived off campus it wasn’t so strange, and they socialized at each other’s apartments.</p>
<p>Our kids went to a U that guaranteed housing for only freshmen year initially; once they got more housing (& by the time our older kid started), they guaranteed for two years & both of my kids used university housing for two years. They actually preferred the apartments they found off-campus after that–it was cheaper & larger while being just as convenient to campus. It was really not as big a deal as it was made out to be. Did NOT hear of any kids who had any difficulty finding decent and safe housing at OK prices if they were willing to have room mates.</p>
<p>Our daughter transferred to an OOS (opposite coast) as a sophomore, and by the time she made her decision, on-campus housing was gone. She got on the college website, which had link for off-campus housing thru which she could look for roommates. She ended up with 3 other girls in an apartment one block off campus- never physically looked at the apartment (or the roommates for that matter) before she arrived for classes. She did take a virtual tour of the apt., and talked to all of the girls prior to signing the lease. Couldn’t have turned out much better than it did- she is rooming again next year with one of the same girls in the same building but a different apt. Even though off-campus apts. require year-round leases, it is still cheaper than the dorms, and saves her having to store her stuff or bring it home. Most campuses have similar posting sites- you just have to be a little adventurous. After that 1st year, students typically find places to live for the up-coming year while they are at school, so there is no guess-work.</p>
<p>If the school is in a college town, most of the apartments near the campus will probably be furnished. They are intended for students. Often, they have larger numbers of bedrooms than typical apartments do and are intended for group living. Three, four, and even five-bedroom apartments are common. And yes, often you can find off-campus apartments that are closer to the academic buildings than some of the outlying dorms – both of my kids did this, at different universities.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t necessarily count on saving money, though. Off-campus housing may or may not be cheaper than on-campus housing. Also, both of my kids found that their food costs went up when they moved off campus because they did not have cars and did not have a supermarket within walking distance. So they were paying premium prices for takeout food and food sold in on-campus dining facilities that take cash.</p>
<p>*Is there anyone else out there that just found out that after freshman year you have to move out of dorms and find other housing alternatives? The University says that’s the way it is and there is nothing they can do about it, not enough room. *</p>
<p>Many schools can’t provide housing for all 4 years. I don’t know of any publics that do…and many privates can’t either.</p>
<p>You can predict this by finding out how many beds the school has and how many students are enrolled (taking into acct if there are grad housing/grad students). Obviously, if the school has about 6000 beds and about 5000 frosh, the writing is on the wall.</p>
<p>(heck, there are many schools that can’t even guarantee housing for frosh.)</p>
<p>I guess I find it more amazing that someone would only be finding this out at the end of freshman year, and that the housing situation wasn’t fully researched before a decision was made. I know when we were looking at schools and knowing that my daughter would be hundreds of miles away from home, housing availability was a key factor in my evaluation of suitability.</p>
<p>That being said, at my daughter’s school housing is not guaranteed, but there does seem to be sufficient beds for the demand. In fact, after freshman year (and move-out from the freshman dorm) once a student gets assigned a dorm location they get preference to remain in that exact room for the remainder of their college years. The first wave of room selections goes to those who want to stay in their current location. If they want to move, they have to ‘release’ their room and then go into general selection.</p>
<p>Students are assigned a time to log in to make room selections, and they can choose both the dorm AND specific room they want. Priority is given based on the number of credits attained, therefore seniors are given first crack at the best spots available.</p>
<p>My daughter enters her junior year in September and has not had an issue at all in finding space.</p>
<p>It’s worth pointing out, too, that having lots of students live off campus in a “college town” around a university encourages local residents to invest in residential and commercial real estate around the campus. That not only enhances the environment for students, it also frees up university capital to be deployed on projects other than residential housing.</p>
<p>I agree, though, that access to a supermarket is pretty important. Most of my kids’ savings from moving off campus came from cooking their own food (which they preferred) vs. meal plans. They didn’t have great food-buying options, but they didn’t have to buy fast food ever.</p>
<p>Agreed that while off-campus living provides many advantages, many families would prefer that their students have a choice of whether or when to move off-campus rather than have their students forced off campus because of limited student housing guarantees. This is especially the case if a school is in an urban area where safety off-campus can become a concern, and if a student has a major that will regularly keep them in a studio, lab, or library until the wee hours of the morning (and so proximity to housing and dining is a plus.) This was one factor we took into consideration when we looked over FrazzledD’s options, and we are happy that she is able to stay on campus until or unless she decides to move out of the dorms.</p>
<p>But, OTOH, some students (especially students who have accepted large merit scholarships, at schools without honors housing) at some schools find dorm living very difficult, and Greek affiliation not an option, so it is also a good idea to investigate off-campus options ahead of time. Many large schools provide listings of off-campus apartments as well as room-mate matching services for off-campus students.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure that the student ghettoes which often develop near university campuses are really enhancements. Because there is a captive market, rents can be high and maintenance kept to a minimum to maximize the return on the investment. This can be the case whether the landlord is local or absentee.</p>