<p>For a 20 year old, there are 60 years of life expectancy to train for successful independent adult life, what is the rush? To get an ideal apartment is not easy, as I said, you may have to start looking in March, its a long process and a learning experience. But why the kid has to do it in the most critical part of their college career and its on the parents dime.</p>
<p>True, all the kids attending UChicago are smart and capable. However, their smartness is not equal, if everyone is getting A, why there is grading? So, there are B’s, C’s, D’s or even F’s. There is no study ever made to correlate on and off campus Student’s GPA, so I am not going to argue the outcomes, but my sentence started with IF. What if to some students off campus living did distract their study? and it happens to be your kid? Do you want to take that risk?</p>
<p>I’ll raise you an IF. What if your kid’s girlfriend/boyfriend lives off campus and they are spending 99% of their time-not-in-class/library there?</p>
<p>Lots of reasons to move off campus that haven’t been mentioned yet:</p>
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<li><p>Unfortunately, you can’t have your cake (study abroad, typically third year) and eat it too (be guaranteed back into your same house.) If A and B are friends with C, D, and E, and A and B are studying abroad in junior year (plausible- about 40% study abroad) then A and B will want to live with friends when they return and C, D, and E will want to live with them. So there are pushes and pulls that influence students to move off-campus.</p></li>
<li><p>House life can be a great social network for the first year or so, but generally students in my experience grow into their RSO (club) affiliations and academic affiliations. And the more time that is spent in deeper or wider connections than the house. A UChicago “house” is a lot smaller than a Harvard, Yale, or Rice College; it may be in some ways similar to a Smith House but probably shares most in common with an MIT “floor.” In other words, houses are pretty small and it’s possible to outgrow them. And before we over-romanticize the notion of a residential college, consider that not everybody who lives in one of those has a particularly College-y experience, either.</p></li>
<li><p>I feel like the kid in this conversation, so I’ll come out and say it: social life is generally better off-campus. If you want to have your friends over, what are you going to do with them, have them eat your ramen noodles and clean their bowls in the bathroom sink? If you have a kitchen and living room, you can really have people over for a dinner party. Or maybe you want to do something a little more… bigger or less tamed than a dinner party. Hard to do that in a Max double. </p></li>
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<p>I think it’s important to emphasize that “off-campus” students are really still part of the life of the University, and all of my friends but one felt their quality of life improved when they decided to move off campus, but they did appreciate the dorm experience.</p>
<p>Unalove, I have a logistical question that I’ll post here to the extent that it might interest others: Are those who study abroad while living in an apartment typically on the hook for the quarter’s rent? Asked another way, are there any sublet options for the one quarter? (I sadly imagine the answer is “no”.)</p>
<p>It’s possible to find a one-quarter sublet (e.g. a visiting researcher is looking for a short-term place to stay) but I don’t think there’s high demand for them?</p>
<p>Yeah, and I can’t imagine a visiting researcher would want to bunk even for a few months with a bunch of 20-year-old third years… Thanks for answering, unalove.</p>
<p>I saw some people who saved on rent by converting a sunroom into a bedroom (thereby making a place for two into a place for three) and saving a bit on rent when a third was paying a piece of it and feeling that they were paying “the real price” when a third was abroad. It’s all about framing, I guess!</p>
<p>But back to the larger question: student apartments can be attractive, they can lead to a better (or at least more intentional and self-directed) social life, and people in apartments still tend to be as (or even more) socially inclusive, as things go from “house-specific social event” to “first and second-degree friend network general social event.”</p>
<p>Not to mention that the social ties continue years and years out! Friend of a friend mentioned to me that she met a UChicago alum recently, I asked who, and she looked at me with an expression of, “Why do you care, the likelihood that you know this person is infinitesmal anyway.” She gave me his name, and it absolutely was somebody I knew- he was a fourth year when I was a first-year, but I knew him from a similar social network of sorts, and we were not housemates.</p>
<p>I am pretty certain that all my kids’ friends who did quarters abroad either were able to sublet their space while they were away or to find an appropriate sublet when they got back. No one paid for an empty apartment room while he or she was away. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen; only that it’s not necessarily the norm.</p>
<p>What’s more, I think there’s something of a subculture of students who keep their housing costs radically low by moving from sublet to sublet, one quarter to the next. Most kids can’t really handle that psychologically – I sure couldn’t – but a few thrive on it.</p>
<p>See, this is interesting for me and I wonder if anyone can answer my question:</p>
<p>I am going to UChicago next year. The way my scholarships and aid worked out, I am going for very little. My expected cost of going there pretty much covers room, board, and tuition. It seems as though that was is left is just the incidentals, travel, fun, etc. So I am basically getting everything out of the university for free. Obviously, going off campus and paying for an apartment seems fiscally irresponsible considering I have room and board for nothing at the university. However, I don’t want to stay on campus all 4 years as the lonely 4th year while all my friends are living together and off campus. I don’t think there is anything I can do, but I was wondering if any of you could weigh in on my situation.</p>
<ol>
<li> You don’t know now how you’ll feel in three years. :-)</li>
<li>You’ll talk to the Office of College Aid about off-campus living allowances and how they work.</li>
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<p>Let’s face it: you’re going to have some people you’re better friends with than others. That’s just an inevitable product of the fact that there are only so many people you can genuinely connect with, spend time with, devote yourself to, etc. Most people’s friend groups come from RSO involvement and simply meeting others they get along with. But even if most or all of your friends happen to be in your college house, it’s a lot more pleasant to go hang out in the apartment of 3-4 of those friends than a dorm bedroom or common room. Then there’s the fact that it’s cheaper. Then there’s the fact that your money goes pretty far in Hyde Park. And cheap, quick food is abound: a lot of people I know don’t cook at all, and they get along fine. </p>
<p>I almost moved off campus after first year, then ended up staying because it was sort of the default option and I couldn’t make up my mind. Had a great time as a second year, but not moving off was my one regret. And I came to regret it a lot.</p>
Thanks for answering, unalove.</p>