Yep, that was me. Mr. Transition. Glad I didn’t jump into an apartment; paying rent, buying furniture, fixing meals, putting together a schedule for fixing meals, searching through a moldy fridge when Chucko forgot he was supposed to fix a meal and where the hell is Chucko anyhow he’s late with the rent so are we all late then or do we just pay his part and try to get it back from him and I’ve got a 20-page single-spaced paper due tomorrow!
A dorm was simpler, AND it let me concentrate on learning to study, making new friends, and weed.
I can actually think of one guy I know who did it perfectly. Dorms up until Spring semester junior year studying abroad, getting out of his comfort zone. Moved to an apartment for his senior year, fall semester with a 12 hour internship and then spring semester with a almost full time internship. A pretty good way to transition from student to adulthood and a job.
At my college, most people lived in dorms (or other school affiliated housing (frats, etc.)) for all 4 years. I did. In hindsight, I think I could have handled living on my own, I appreciated the dorms both then and now for all the reasons that people listed above. Dorms also have a nice safety net - if things aren’t working out with you and your roommate, there are cumbersome ways around that, but students don’t have to work with a landlord (which is a lot, lot harder.
I think it can be a good transition for students between living with your parents and living on your own, but it isn’t necessary. You know your kid and how ready they are for that kind of responsibility.
Dorm, all the way. We are discussing this with the lil’wrekker right now.
She’s a junior and in upper classman dorms. Which are nicer. She’s wanting to move to a house off campus with several girls. Her all-in scholarship pays for her dorm and meal card. I’ve told her my preference. And described the horrors of a house with a bunch of girls. I hope she listens.
She’s 21 and very mature, (every Tuesday). I can’t stop her. But I ain’t paying her rent, either.
I commuted my first two years then got an apartment with a friend. My mother just about blew a gasket when I moved. My friend had been thrown out of his house when he took his all tuition scholarship and went to college. “We let you finish HS, now go out and get a job”, he father said. Fortunately the very sympathetic dean of men had an unoccupied dorm room and let his occupy it gratis. His second year, my third we got that apartment about a half mile from campus. But as far as the school knew we were still commuters.
The related question is if the roommates are good with money, or even just generally good. If your dorm-mate flakes out and runs home or spends all their money on dope or moves their SO in, none of that is on you. In most apartments, landlords can come after any one person for all the rent–and they go where the money is, not what is fair. Report your dorm mate for moving in their SO and 3 pets, it’s the dorm mate who gets in trouble and maybe kicked out. Report that shit to your landlord, maybe you all get kicked out, maybe just the roommate does but now you have to pay the full shot.
Normally, you move into an apartment with people you met in the dorm, whom you know personally. Even then it’s risky. The OP is talking about his student starting out in an apartment. I would be very, very worried about random roommates on an apartment, especially if covering the whole rent for a semester or a year would be ruinous (if it would merely suck, that’s a lot safer).
Congrats on her scholarship! I’m sure that’s a big help having that. In a case like that, maybe it’s not terrible to spend several thousands of dollars in rent, food and utilities on renting a place rather than being in a dorm. It’s not a great financial use of the money, but I’m assuming that she won’t have a lot of loans after she graduates. Even if she had to finance the $5000 or whatever it will cost to live off campus, that’s not terrible if it’s her only loan.
But I guess that’s another part of the decision: What is the cost difference compared to the dorm? It’s not unusual for it to be cheaper to live off campus. Sometimes the cost for on-campus room and board can be surprisingly higher than living in an apartment with roommates. Living on campus may require purchase of a food plan, which may equate to a higher per-meal cost than if the student was making their own food. With college being as expensive as it is, whether to live on or off campus may be more of a financial decision than a personal preference.
Most colleges have really updated them. Your experience was about the same as mine but now they are “suites” where say 4 people have their own bedrooms but a shared kitchen, living room, and bathroom.
HERE is a link to one such place. The school itself has no dorms or housing but a nearby privately owned complex only rents to students and its sort of like a dorm.
HERE is similar housing at another tech school. I have visited these and I was blown away by how much better they were than what our dorms were like.
OK – we’re talking 70s – but the serious drugs, sex and all were more in the dorms than off-campus apartments. And even if you were apartment living you could still buy a meal plan for the cafeteria; not that many did but there were a few. Personally I had my own place just after graduating high school so a lot of that was a moot consideration for me.
Like others said – I know 16 year olds who could manage an apartment and their lives responsibly and I work with a lot of people in their 30s who can’t. So it all comes down to the individual.
She shouldn’t need any loans for her double major. Unless she really screws up, somehow.
She traveled last summer on an internship, which cost me a small fortune for her to get that honor. And her program is going to Japan this summer, another small fortune.
We spend plenty of cash with her car, gas, clothes and incidentals.
Don’t let any one tell you a full-ride scholarship pays for everything. It’s a lie. Books and school supplies need a big fat check every semester.
She’s a good student. Makes the deans list everytime. To be so smart she’s spectacularly dumb about money.
I lived in a dorm one year, got an off campus apartment the next, then moved back into the dorm the third because I couldn’t afford to live off campus any more. Room and board was less in the dorm than just the rent for my apartment, and there was electric, gas, phone and food on top of that - all included in my dorm costs.
Yup. I’m very active in my university’s alumni association and it’s amazing how nice dorms and dining halls are these days. I’m quite envious and I can’t imagine wanting to live off campus if I was a typical 18-24 year old undergrad. And, it’s common among all good universities. I do some opposition research on YouTube checking out other school’s dorms and they’re all quite nice.
But, wow, I showed the website to my mom and got the most amazing ‘Ok, boomer’ rant for over half an hour. Apparently, she thinks the living conditions should resemble a developing nation prison and you’re only there to study. And, of course studying means pulling musty old books out of the library basement and firing up the IBM Selectric typewriter! Good thing I didn’t mention that there’s a Starbucks inside the FSU library now.
Beyond that, if your roommate turns out to be unlivable or otherwise incompatible, you’re not bound to them- there’s usually some sort of recourse- the RA will talk to the two of you and mediate your problems, you can switch rooms at the end of the semester, etc…
With roommates, you’re stuck until you break the lease / find another roommate.
Plus, there’s a certain value to that communal experience- you learn a LOT from each other in a dorm- from the mundane stuff like how to best sort your laundry (or to sort it at all), to life-changing revelations about different cultures/communities/etc…
I did dorm first two years, apartment/shared house the rest of the time. I think this is going to vary wildly by individual, but I did really enjoy dorm life and socially I found it very rewarding. A good portion of my closest friends are dorm mates that I never shared a room/apartment/house with, but rather just knew them through the dorm.
I moved off campus my junior year partly because it was actually cheaper than the dorms, and partly because I felt it somehow felt a bit more “grown up.” I had already established a good social circle my first two years at the dorms and through extra curricular activities, and I kind of liked the idea of getting a bit more “freedom” by living off-campus and experiencing a little bit of more independent adult life. And, like I said, it was cheaper.
But then I’ve met people who had absolutely no interest in dorm life, and no interest in co-habitating with other people and would have been better off off-campus in a studio (or in a single occupancy room in one of our dorms, but those tended not to go to freshmen.) So I really do think it varies by individual. Personally, I do think some aspect of communal living is beneficial to most people, but I’m not going to force it on anybody.
And I found that making time to study was extremely difficult. The dorm even had little cells in the basement. Bare room, table, light, not much more, so you could shut yourself inside.
Dorm living was fun, but was not conducive to studying.
One thing to consider is that it’s much simpler for an introvert to become a hermit living off campus instead of the dorm. Living on-campus means there’s frequent opportunities for casual interaction with other students, which means more opportunities for friendships to form. An introvert would have to work hard to be totally isolated while living on-campus. When living off-campus, the person can easily not interact with anyone at all. It’s going to be a lot harder for an off-campus introvert to make friends since they will likely need to be the ones to reach out to other people. I can totally understand an introvert wanting to live alone in a studio apartment, but that would likely come with the side effect of having not many friends (or possibly none).
I wouldn’t force it on anyone but I wouldn’t be optimistic about a college freshman’s chance of success if they lived by themselves off campus. That seems like a recipe for disaster and more time spent with Netflix, video games, and long FaceTiming with high school friends.
Sure, that can happen in a dorm as well but generally there’s at least some pressure to get out and do things. Even watching a movie together in the common area or campus cinema is better than binge watching Netflix on your laptop alone.
I can’t speak for all majors but there’s usually a ton of group work involved even in large lecture classes. Better start getting used to working with other people sooner than later.
If they are going directly from high school to college, a dorm is best IMO. Failing that, there are rooming houses to consider and some newer apartments and condos are set up similar to dorms with tiny kitchens in units but also large common areas, sometimes with scheduled activities similar to dorms. These places are usually not far off campus and are a workable option. That said, the price can be steep.
I personally found it more motivational to studying than living off-campus. My absolute worst grades in college were when I lived off-campus and, for me, part of that was the freedom to do whatever the hell I wanted. I guess there was that in dorms, too, but when I saw most of my dorm hanker down to study and get homework done, it was motivational for me to do the same. I also found it much easier to skip classes when I lived off campus, whereas in dorms, somebody would notice and ask what the hell is going on with me that I’m not going to class. I’m sure this varies by dorm and college, but there was just a bit more structure to dorm life than off-campus life.