We have a HS senior who will be going off to college next year. One school is a tech school with no dorms. The students rent their own apartments.
Now back in my day the dorms were a good transition for students. You had the college watching them (somewhat). Students often switch to an apartment by their 3rd or 4th year.
Thing is with an apartment the student then has to deal with landlords, cooking their own food, and doing all their own cleaning.
My question is how old are you finding most students to be when they are capable or even wanting to have an apartment of their own?
But seriously, it’s going to depend on each individual student. Some are ready to live on their own at 12. Others won’t ever get there.
The only real question is: Is your HS senior ready to live on their own? Are these single-occupancy apartments, or more of a roommate/group situation? Having a roommate or three to rely on and help each other out can be a big help, but it can also compound disasters; of course that’s also going to depend on the individual roommates.
Personally, I was out of my parent’s house at 20; rented a house with 3 friends. I feel like I was adequately prepared, but even so there was still a pretty steep learning curve, especially regarding financial matters. Budgeting is an extremely important skill you’ll definitely want to arm them with before setting them loose.
This is what I experienced and I am a big fan of it. I would also add that dorms bring a bit of interesting experience. You are basically cramming a bunch of young people in a small space with common halls. They make friends, meet very different kind of people. Once those friends have been made they can get apartments in their 3rd and 4th year.
Heck, that is how I met my wife. She was right down the hall in the co-ed* dorm. So I am a big fan.
*Here co-ed actually means co-ed. Not that stupid meaning of “female.”
I think it’s probably ideal for a kid to spend at least a year on campus with a meal plan while he adjusts to living away from home. Then, once the kid has gotten used to the basics of living with non-family members, taking care of basic household chores, and feeding him or herself, the kid can take on the additional challenge of living in an apartment, paying rent, and commuting a little bit farther. Different kids will handle living in an apartment differently of course but basically every kid who graduated from that school went through the same ordeal. They all survived and your kid will too (if he or she goes here).
The best source of information will be upper classmen and their parents. If your child toured the school, start asking questions of the kids you met there and then ask about chatting with their parents. You will likely be co-signing the lease in any even so just get used to the idea that you will be paying the rent directly. Also, ask whether the school has a dean or adviser who works with freshmen to find roommates and deal with housing issues. People have been solving these problems at this school for years. Don’t feel you have to reinvent the wheel.
I agree w/ you that dorms are a good transition. I’ve long thought that colleges get a lot of credit for the fact that young people just mature and take on add’l responsibilities during those years. The forced socialization is another big benefit.
Of course, over the past few years I have stayed in dorms while attending music camps. Hard to imagine living in those concrete block cells with another person!
In my time/school (Big 10, late 70s) most folk moved out of the dorms into apts after sophomore year. Some moved into frats earlier. Actually, I think dorms or other “approved housing” was required the 1st 2 years.
In my experience, the apartments were far cheaper than dorms. A dorm was just a concrete room while an apartment was much larger and nicer as well as cheaper.
In my school, you had to live in the dorms the first year though, you could get an apartment second year. I assume it was partly to teach responsibility and meet people but probably more a money making scheme. A thousand a month to share a concrete cell is lucrative.
My son just graduated from college last year. He stayed in the dorms for the first three years, then got an on-campus apartment for his senior year. He initially wanted an off-campus apartment or rental house for his senior year, but I cautioned him about the hazards of dealing with landlords and leases.
My caution ended up being prophetic – the friend he was going to rent a house with ended up getting evicted from said house the week before school started. The landlord had a bunch of supposed reasons for the eviction (noise and a supposedly late rent check), but the real reason was that he wanted the room for one of his friends. (The landlord lived in the house and worked at the university.) It was too late to find other housing, so the friend ended up commuting from his parents’ house (1-1/2 hours each way) and crashing on people’s couches on campus.
(I had a similar issue happen to me when I was a single guy in the Navy, but in my case the landlord abruptly decided to sell the house. I was given just two weeks to find a new place to live.)
So our son instead got an on-campus apartment for his senior year. This was an actual 4-bedroom apartment with a living room and a full kitchen, but was owned and administered by the university housing services (so no landlord to deal with). No meal plan was required if you lived in one of these apartments. This was a good compromise.
Bottom line – I wouldn’t advise any college student to get an off-campus apartment. Besides landlord issues, you have to figure out how to get to school every day (i.e. transportation), and I just think that students are less connected to the university community when they are living off campus.
There wasn’t enough dorm space when my daughter started at UCF, so she and her best friend got an apartment together. My kid already knew how to cook and do laundry and general household chores because she’d been doing her share at home since she was little. And the two of them weathered 4 hurricanes just fine that first year.
On the other hand, I’ve known students who, in their 20s, needed adult supervision.
My first and only year in my first college, I commuted from home - I could barely afford the school, let alone on-campus housing. When I went back to school at 22, I was not going to live in a dorm. I shared a house for a short time with another student, and it ended badly. I did much better living in my own place.
One of the big questions is, can your kid handle money? My friend’s freshman daughter got lonely during her first semester away and decided to fly her boyfriend up to see her. She really had no concept that the money her parents had put in the bank for her was supposed to last for at least the first semester.
I lived in the dorm my first two years and lived in off-campus housing the other two years. I liked living in the apartment way better than living in the dorm, but I am glad I got the dorm experience. I didn’t get much of the social benefits out if it, but I like that I got to experience that aspect of college life.
Another advantage of dorms, besides those listed already, is that it is easier to be motivated to do homework if everyone else is doing homework, and also that you’ll probably have classmates living near you, so you can work together.
But meeting people is number one. I made friends in the dorm my freshman year I’m still in touch with 50 years later.
For me the two biggest advantages to living in a dorm were meeting people (some of whom are still friends) and being able to devote more time to studies–no cooking and very little cleaning. I was mature enough to handle an apartment, but when I did move, I realized the drawbacks.
Another factor is that dorms are closer to where classes are held. An apartment almost always means some sort of commute.
I wish I’d stayed in the dorms all 4 years. Moving to a house with two non students that I knew from the restaurant I worked at was a mistake. I became disengaged from what’s going on at the campus and spent way too much time watching TV and movies. Also, I ate like shit too often, at least at the dining halls they have fruit in front of you and healthier choices.
At least my senior year I got more engaged at school. I quit the restaurant job as it was hurting my grades and my non student roommates both found boyfriends so we weren’t hanging out like we used to.
Preach it!!! Every landlord in a college town is looking for ways to screw over students.
I know my school also had university apartments, they were kinda aimed at older and/or married students, often people who had served in the military. But, they were open to all.
Living a dorm is most beneficial initially, but not so important later on. A freshman who lives off campus is going to have very different college experience than someone who lives in the dorm. For some kids that’s a good thing, but most kids would likely benefit from being on campus their first year and maybe their second. The third and fourth years it is not as important because kids have already made friends and established study habits.
Living with roommates in a house or apartment can be a great learning experience in many ways. When there are kitchens and bathrooms that get dirty and need to be cleaned, your kid will learn a lot about living with other people. Also they can learn financial issues like splitting utilities, paying stuff on time, etc. Doing that kind of stuff when you’re in college surrounded by other college students is more forgiving than when you’re an official adult.
Dorms are nearly always horribly overpriced, but they do seem to promote social cohesion and help loners come out of their shells. At my university (which only had enough dorms for about 20% of the student body), there were off-campus apartments that were structured like dorms - that is, there were individual leases on rooms within an apartment, and you could move in with people you liked or they could just assign you to an empty room. Individual room leases were more expensive than renting a whole apartment and splitting the cost, but (1) you didn’t get screwed if your buddy failed to pay his portion of the rent, and (2) they were still cheaper and nicer than dorms.
