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how much of a difference will it make if i go to college really close to my house (like 15 minutes)? will it detract from the overall "college experience"? will it feel as if i have never left home? cuz that would suck.
i'm really interested in a college, but the only thing holding my back is it's location. any suggestions?

By Parentofteen (Parentofteen) on Wednesday, September 03, 2003 - 04:39 pm: Edit

I would definitely check out locations at least more than one hour away from home. It would be too tempting to run home for extra clothes, to do laundry, to get a good meal, to find a quiet place to study, etc. to really feel like a true college experience, I think. Besides, some people's parents might feel the need to "pop in" unannounced too often.

I attended college only 1 1/2 hours from home, yet I did not ever go home except for major breaks. It was a nice feeling to know that home was only a short drive away, but too much of an inconvenience to go there often. Besides, having to fend for oneself without falling back on the comforts of home is truly one of the most important aspects of college.

By Shu (Shu) on Thursday, September 04, 2003 - 11:50 am: Edit

It takes me 15 minutes to attend school by bus. I lived in my university almost one year(beside vocations) when I was a freshman, and half a year for my second year, 3 months for my third year. Although I lived at home more times, I had got good touch with my classmate and professors; I also tended most of the activities.

In my vision, it does have more or less effect when you live at home, for example I couldn't spend more time with my classmates, and I found that the relationship between my current classmates and I is not as closely as that in the high school...

By Kwyjibo86 (Kwyjibo86) on Thursday, September 04, 2003 - 03:47 pm: Edit

i would live in the dorms on campus if i went to this school... there's no way i would stay at home (even my parents want me to live on campus).

By Becks777 (Becks777) on Thursday, September 04, 2003 - 05:14 pm: Edit

Even if u live on campus, sometimes........................especially when things are not working out................u might feel that why am i spending extra $8000 to live on campus when i can easliy live at home!!

By Magenta (Magenta) on Sunday, September 07, 2003 - 02:10 pm: Edit

I lived about 10 minutes from campus in undergraduate school and other than not getting along great with my father over certain things, it was great. I spent a few nights on campus and found the rooms to be ridiculously small (those at our son's university are far nicer, with a private bath shared between four people and a walk-in closet and separate sinks for each bedroom - so three sinks total per four people - and a nice living room between the two bedrooms that each have two beds), the buffet for all meals in the dining hall to be asking for people to put on at least 10 pounds the freshman year (the food at that dining hall was actually okay and just the donuts alone would do me in if I kept eating them in college like I did in 7th-9th grades), and the noise in the dorms to be crazy. I also just can't live with female girls...spend a night here or there, sure, but live with for days at a time, no (one who visited me in graduate school was bulimic and took a bite out of every single chocolate in the new box a guy had given me for Valentine's Day and then she put those bitten into chocolates back in the wrappers in the box; another left her tampons out on the counter, resulting in my boyfriend to thinking it was my time of the month; another dropped my one P*n*s Colada souvenir glass onto the only other one I had while she took it upon herself to empty my dishwasher while I was in class, thus breaking both and I swear she just had a problem with those glasses as she was always complaining about how her boyfriend's p*n*s was so small she couldn't even feel it during sex...anyway, they all just drove me nuts, where men could stay a week and never rub me the wrong way - no pun intended - at all).

Living such a short distance from campus allows you to have time to spread out in a nice sized home and study or crank out a paper or whatever in peace while still being able to hit every party, movie, club meeting, whatever you want on campus. It likely will feel like you never left home, so if that is something you are craving, moving out might be better. I was aching to move out till my senior year in high school, when my mother got cancer. My first semester of college was in part spent going to the hospital to visit my mom, visiting neighbors and calling relatives to let them know when she died, dealing with writing her obituary and thank you notes for flowers, all sorts of stuff that just wouldn't have been as easy were I living on campus. And then I feared my father would die as quite a few males do within a year of losing a spouse. My dad also was just not very independent - all he could cook was steaks and hot dogs on a grill and he had never paid bills as my mother always did that and made out the taxes and did the grocery shopping, etc. I felt it best to stick around and cook dinners (though he did fend for himself when I went out to dinner, something he wife now doesn't make him do...she even makes lunch for him if she has a lunch meeting!), help him grocery shop, etc. Mostly, just so he wasn't feeling all alone, though I confess that I was out of the house most of the time...but just knowing someone else resided there I think was a help to him. And the year I graduated from college (which hit me before I knew it as I somehow took everything I needed a semester early and graduated early, which I sort of wish I didn't do in retrospect, but it wasn't a big deal either way), I urged my father to propose to someone he had been dating a few months, explaining that she was a good woman (good is an understatement; she belongs in the Stepford Wives movie - how she stayed single for 55 years still puzzle me) and I was going out of state for graduate school so he'd best find himself someone else to share life with now. My dad married her about two months before I graduated and left home.

But even if my parents were both alive and healthy and independent during my college years, I wouldn't have wanted to live on campus...no way. Just not my style (but keep in mind this is ME, who quit Girl Scouts as there was no room service at camp outs...I'd rather pitch a fit than pitch a tent, i guess :o). My mother, back when she was well, was looking into buying me my own house in the neighborhood (she had two in mind, one was the largest house in the neighborhood and I can only imagine what college parties would have done to it, so this is one small benefit that she died when she did as it would have been too much to have spoiled me to THAT extent). I don't suspect a house for most undergraduates is an option, but I'm not sure. Our next door neighbor's son got a full athletic scholarship in Florida and he learned that buying a condo and renting it out to his son and some of his son's college friends had some sort of weird write off and was a good investment. Wish I could tell you more about that one, but I can't. I can say apartments OFF campus are often far better deals than those ON campus, so you might want to look into that option.

Someone noted that learning to live on your own is an important part of the college experience. Maybe if you are in an apartment that happens, but I don't think it does so much in a dinky dorm room (sure not much to clean let alone repair there) with no kitchen and all meals prepared for you. And you can learn that after college - I don't think there is a critical learning time here like with being able to pick up a foreign accent (I read in "Nature via Nurture" that between 15 and 24, the neurons for accent formation are pruned and you lose the window of opportunity to sound like a native speaker, though I hear actors and actresses doing pretty well after 24, so I am a bit skeptical). I had a housekeeper my first 20 years of life, so didn't learn to do laundry till graduate school, and this never hurt me.

Now what you might lose by not being on campus is the sort of dorm comraderie that many (but my no means all) who live on campus in dorms have. I hung out in dorms some and still have friends about 20 years later from those days hanging out in a dorm, but I didn't live on campus, so it's not like you MUST live on campus to make life long friendships there. But if you are an introvert, I think the odds of making friends go way down if you live off campus, though still not to zero. My brother lived off campus and had at least four good friends that he met from shared classes and being in the same honors societies or whatever. One committed suicide in graduate school (I was going out with him at the time and saw it coming, but that's another long story), another he lost touch with during graduate school years, another he lost touch with after the guy sent back my engagement notice with the photo ripped in half to separate me and my now husband (another long story, but he was at Harvard doing his doctorate in physics and likely under some stress there), and the fourth was his bestman in his wedding and still his best friend (though this guy sort of doesn't count as this is one he knew in high school and didn't just meet in college).

And the money might be another factor....would you be adding debt to your picture if you lived on campus? For me, that was never a factor as my parents had plenty of money having done well in their careers and so the price of a dorm would have been no big deal to them, though I have to confess I would rather than not spend money there was no need to spend (which is one reason I went ahead and graduated early - one less semester of tuition and books), and my parents both felt similarly (which is why my brother and I attended the state U rather than some more prestigious college - they would have paid for an expensive college if we had really wanted to attend one, I feel pretty sure, but they made it clear that they felt the wiser place to spend the big bucks was graduate school, and in my brother's case, this was particularly true as for his majors, the state U had some of the strongest departments in the nation - far better than many top 25 colleges).

Our own son lives at home while going to college, but his situation isn't typical - he started at age 9 and I felt the president of the university bizarre in even asking our son if he'd like to live on campus (which he absolutely did not wish to do at 9, but at 10 or 11, sort of seemed to think it might be fun, and now is more thinking it wouldn't be so great again). But he's got a mother who opted to be a free spirit and thus is free to drive him around and after two years of our son politely asking, even got up at 3:45 AM M-F to drive him to crew practices that started ed 5 AM. He does quite a bit on campus. He's on the SGA (something that didn't get out till 5:30 AM at the end of last semester, but my husband insisted he come home at 3:30 AM as he had morning classes and it was finals week, I think, so we aren't COMPLETELY flexible, but we try); my husband and I usually just go out to dinner and a movie and then pick our son up on campus those nights (makes for a nice once a week "date" for us, really). Our son goes to the Honors College opera, play, etc. outings and their meetings with professors on various topics. He goes to the entrepreneurship talks held usually by area CEOs. He's gone to math club pizza lunches and movies, chess club meeting, college plays, dances (as in dance performances and also things like homecoming and a crew formal), concerts (all sorts of them - Third Eye Blind to a guitar ensemble to two improvisation musician workshops this past Friday), etc. One night, he went to a friend's birthday pool party till 10 PM and then went straight to the campus Anime marathon till about 1 AM (yes, he wanted to spend the night, but again, we are only so flexible). He's gone to the inner city with Golden Key to read to kids and help them paint toys. He's gone to a couple murder mystery dinner nights and a bunch of movies on campus with friends who aren't even in any classes or activities with him - just people he's met in the student union during lunch. He won some money in a campus comedy contest his first year (and would have entered the second year, but his business plan competition final round was the same night and he chose wisely as his team came in first and he ended up with $1K cash - actually, $1,100 if we count the $100 he also got for the Most Valuable Employee award - and TONS of perks like skybox seats for area pro baseball and basketball games, a helicopter ride, etc.). He's enjoyed doing open mike nights playing his keyboard, as well as playing frisbee and flying kites made of concert posters and doing bumper cars in front of the student union and just all kinds of stuff. He seems to do more on campus than a lot of people living there, honestly.

So yes, I feel you can have a pretty full college experience even if you live at home. It is, however, a *different* experience and you just need to decide which is the more fitting experience for YOU.