2012-04-17, 08:00 PM
At my school, living on campus is expensive, so I personally choose to live off-campus by myself. Currently, I live a 30 minute, 1 bus ride away from campus, and I'm fine with that. Its significantly cheaper than living on campus. Here, transit is built into our tuition, so transiting is essentially "free", in the sense we have no choice but to pay for it. However, driving to campus is an expensive endeavor, as it costs $14 to park on campus all day, not to mention some crazy amount of taxes (Im not entirely sure, but last I heard, it was upwards of 20%) if you get monthly or semester passes. I think to park at my school for 1 semester, its in the range of $800-1k, not to mention all the money you'll spend on gas, so if you plan to drive, you might spend less living on campus.
I'm like Green in the sense that I find my break times on campus very unproductive, but it feels a waste to just leave my house sitting here (1200 square feet just to rot while I live on campus? no thanks), so I worked around it by minimizing the number of days Im at school (for the last two years, I've crammed all my courses in on 2 days the first semester, and 3 days in the second). Additionally, living by myself gives me a lot of freedom. I don't have to deal with messy roommates (roommates at my school are assigned, and the best you can do is work around it by applying for preferences of who you want to stay with), or people being noisy. Additionally, I can also be as noisy as I want without fear of disturbing my roommates, a factor I absolutely love, as being a piano major, I have this bad habit of practicing till 4 am in the morning sometimes.
With most of my friends living on campus and me tagging around them a lot of the time, I can definitely say that living off campus does take away from a lot of time I can interact with them, and I can definitely see the camaraderie built in living together/so close to each other. However, I chose that it wasn't worth the hassle, as it is cheaper to live by myself, and I can live with the 30 minute transit rides to and from campus 2 days a week. Its ultimately dependent on what you want and whether you're willing to sacrifice for it. Judging from what you're saying, I'd say you're probably better off living on campus, and worrying about your loans later.
I'm like Green in the sense that I find my break times on campus very unproductive, but it feels a waste to just leave my house sitting here (1200 square feet just to rot while I live on campus? no thanks), so I worked around it by minimizing the number of days Im at school (for the last two years, I've crammed all my courses in on 2 days the first semester, and 3 days in the second). Additionally, living by myself gives me a lot of freedom. I don't have to deal with messy roommates (roommates at my school are assigned, and the best you can do is work around it by applying for preferences of who you want to stay with), or people being noisy. Additionally, I can also be as noisy as I want without fear of disturbing my roommates, a factor I absolutely love, as being a piano major, I have this bad habit of practicing till 4 am in the morning sometimes.
With most of my friends living on campus and me tagging around them a lot of the time, I can definitely say that living off campus does take away from a lot of time I can interact with them, and I can definitely see the camaraderie built in living together/so close to each other. However, I chose that it wasn't worth the hassle, as it is cheaper to live by myself, and I can live with the 30 minute transit rides to and from campus 2 days a week. Its ultimately dependent on what you want and whether you're willing to sacrifice for it. Judging from what you're saying, I'd say you're probably better off living on campus, and worrying about your loans later.