<p>I've noticed that many colleges prohibit freshmen from having cars their first year at school.</p>
<p>At my D's HS, it seems all of the seniors drive to school and almost all of the juniors.</p>
<p>So, allowing teenagers to drive to their high school but not at college seems odd. And, what do parents do with the student's unused car for a whole year?</p>
<p>Anyone aware of the logic of this?</p>
<p>(I had a car all through college and grad school.)</p>
<p>The rationale I’ve heard, and it makes sense to me, is that there are usually limits to the number of parking spaces and like some schools save the “better” dorms for upperclassmen, they also save parking spots for them. </p>
<p>I only had a car my senior year on a pretty rural campus. Most kids living there didn’t have cars. We either got rides from friends or stayed on campus. It’s one of the reasons D is only looking for a school in a city with a real public transportation system. Not that she’d have a car anyway.</p>
<p>Because most campuses you don’t need one and there’s limited parking.</p>
<p>Two words: limited parking.</p>
<p>My freshman year, only sophomores and up could park by their dorm M-F, so I had to park my car across campus at the stadium all week. Then I’d have to move my car somewhere (by my dorm) for home football games, same with home basketball games if you parked on the basketball side of the stadium complex. </p>
<p>The kids who had cars were kids who generally lived an awkward distance away from home–close enough that a flight wasn’t worth spending the money on, but far enough away that having their parents pick them up for breaks was a pain. I lived 3.5 hours away from school, so my dad would’ve had to drive 3.5 hours there, load me up, turn around and drive 3.5 hours back. But it wasn’t worth flying home either! Thus, I had my car</p>
<p>Any freshman can bring a car to college at any school. But he will have to find and pay for off campus parking on his own. At big city schools, that could cost about $500/month or more. Are you willing to pay that dad?</p>
<p>Also, golf, MOST college freshmen don’t have their own cars.</p>
<p>At my school, there’s already limited parking as it is. They can’t let every freshman bring his or her car; parking would be a nightmare. So they limit it to sophomores - seniors, commuters, freshmen who live 500 miles away or more, have an off-campus job, or have a medical need for it (doctor’s appointments for a chronic illness). That’s pretty generous, imo, and I didn’t even have a car freshman year even though I was 550 miles away from home.</p>
<p>There’s limited parking space, and they also reason that if freshmen are going to be living on campus (and most schools require that freshmen live on campus), they wouldn’t need a car anyway.</p>
<p>At my school, freshmen can have cars. It’s in the middle of a big downtown area and parking is always a big deal. There’s never enough room for everyone. Even though it is a commuter campus, most freshmen end up living on campus so with new dorms popping up in parking lots, I think they’ll start putting more restrictions on who will park on campus if they live in dorms. </p>
<p>At my old school, my roommate had to park across campus in the stadium lot and would have to move it certain hours of every weekend and during home games. Only seniors could leave their cars in lots behind dorms. There were many, many occasions where my suitemates and I would have to get up in nightmarish weather to move her car so she wouldn’t get ticketed. It didn’t seem worth the headache to be a sophomore and have a car on campus.</p>
<p>“So, allowing teenagers to drive to their high school but not at college seems odd. And, what do parents do with the student’s unused car for a whole year?”</p>
<p>Well, nobody lives at high school for starters. You have to get there one way or another, which means either taking the bus, being dropped off by your parents, or driving yourself. In college, everything you need to go to for class is within a 15 minute walk at most. If you’re living in the dorms then you most likely have a meal plan so you don’t really need to go to the supermarket often. Basically, for most residential students, it’s a luxury rather than a necessity.</p>
<p>And since parking is so limited on most campuses, they figure that freshmen should be the last to have parking passes unless they’re commuters. </p>
<p>As for what the parents do with the kid’s car, I’m guessing you should just start it up once every two weeks or so to keep the battery fresh and whatnot. And it won’t be unused the whole year… just wait till they get back for Thanksgiving and Christmas</p>
<p>My school allows Freshman to bring a car…but they have to park it at a lot about 2 miles away from campus and take a shuttle that runs to it. </p>
<p>Most campuses have very limited parking. And the rationale is that if Freshman have to live on campus they don’t need the car much anyway.</p>
<p>It’s usually because there would be a huge shortage of parking if every freshman drove to school. Also most freshman don’t really need a car because they live on campus. I had a car as a freshman but they overcharge parking passes to limit the amount of cars.</p>
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<p>This is not true at many universities. I think it’s possible that nationally, more people commute to university than live in university housing or within .8 miles (about 15 minutes walk) of some part of campus.</p>
<p>I think the main reasons are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Parking is limited and there is not enough parking spaces to meet the demand for parking, so someone has to be cut.</p></li>
<li><p>The school cares least about freshmen because they are most likely to transfer or drop out on a whim, or possibly some other reason. Therefore, if you must restrict the services some group can partake in, it should be freshmen. They are the least likely to be a consistent income source or to promote the school to others in the future.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Further, you might justify the case that seniors should be cut rather than freshmen, as they want to retain freshmen. But allowing someone to park on campus only freshman, sophomore, and junior year would probably cause a lot more discontent with the school than only sophomore, junior, and senior year. It’s better to get something you didn’t have before than to lose what you always had later.</p>
<p>This is not a life or death issue, but …</p>
<p>The prime responses: “limited parking” and “car not needed” are contradictory. If cars are not needed then there is little demand. If there is limited demand, then number of parking spaces is in reality not the real issue.</p>
<p>Also, allowing upper classman but not freshmen is pretty arbitrary. Why not students who live on campus versus off? Or those who live more than a certain number of miles away? Etc.</p>
<p>I don’t know for a fact but I’m suspecting something else is at work here that hasn’t been touched on yet. </p>
<p>Again, not a critical issue nor probably a life or death shower stopper for us on selecting.</p>
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<p>No they’re not. That makes no sense whatsoever. There is limited parking and since most freshmen don’t need parking, they reserve what LIMITED PARKING they have for upperclassman. These upperclassman are generally those who live off campus, have off campus jobs, etc. </p>
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<p>No it’s not. See reasons above for why. </p>
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<p>Methinks you’re being paranoid tbh.</p>
<p>I also think a lot of schools ( the exception being commuter heavy schools) want to encourage their freshmen to stick around and get immersed in the campus. Access to a car increases the likelihood that kids will go home or away for a weekend, etc. </p>
<p>Many campuses are entirely walk able or served by univ shuttles etc making cars unnecessary for daily life.</p>
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<p>First, it’s easy and objective. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where someone lives (many live in large apartment complexes), and where they should be going to. Where their classes are? The center of the main campus? The closest university territory? The closest bus stop? Now you are affecting the housing markets also, since if a house is just within the “no permit allowed” area the demand of that house decreases. Surely there would be some outcry about that. And even if a very rigorous set of standards are developed, people will still argue that it’s not right. It’s much much more complicated than “Do you have X number of credits.” That’s clear and objective.</p>
<p>The “car is not needed” is likely something propagated by universities to make students asking for permits who are not eligible drop the subject. There is genuinely a lack of supply.</p>
<p>a lot of times it has to do with the amount of spces they have avaliable on campus for parking</p>
<p>Maybe there is a fear that freshmen need to learn the partying ropes, and there is a fear that some lessons will be learned the hard way via driving drunk.</p>
<p>(“limited parking” is the printable/PR answer, but I wonder if the above is in the back of the minds of administration…)</p>
<p>“Limited parking” has been said, about 10x already, but another reason I think is so that freshmen are kind of “forced” to stay on campus and learn the ropes of college. Leaving home can be an adjustment to begin with and I guess not having a car and not having to worry about gas, parking, security, is one less thing to stress about on top of a new college courseload/homesickness/new surroundings/etc.</p>