How important is 4 years of campus housing

[Anonymous]

Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

Why did you have to pay the rent for the kids studying abroad?
Thats on them to find a subletter or otherwise they still continue to pay rent even if they're abroad.

Don't tell me the lease is under 1 name (yours)? You should have wirked that out prior.

[Anonymous]

UCLA guarantees 4 yrs in campus housing. Though you would likely be in a 3 person room in 1st yr

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

Why did you have to pay the rent for the kids studying abroad?
Thats on them to find a subletter or otherwise they still continue to pay rent even if they're abroad.

Don't tell me the lease is under 1 name (yours)? You should have wirked that out prior.

Her DD was also gone. I read it as that each of the kids studying abroad was also paying rent while they were gone, not that OP was covering the rent for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It depends what off campus housing looks like. Do students live in apartments with other students at the edge of campus? That might as well be dorm life but with a private landlord. Do students live scattered throughout the city and drive/bus long distances to get to class? That would disqualify a school for my child.

This! Some “off” campus apartments are basically dorm apartments with other students and are adjacent to campus, closer than some of the official dorms. We limited our search to schools with guaranteed for 2 yrs minimum, the option for all 4 years(even if it had to be RA ), and “off” campus apartments for the last 1-2 yrs that were on campus/as walkable as dorms ie no car needed.
She also wanted engineering and a smallish undergraduate experience
(Cornell was the biggest school applied to)

Cornell
Penn
Princeton
Hopkins
Duke
Columbia
Northwestern
Uchicago
WashU
Stanford
Wake
And 3 LACs Swarthmore,HarveyMudd,
W&L
Got into many of the above, picked Penn, loves it! Her campus apartment is closer to most Seas buildings than the dorms. It’s guaranteed 2 yrs dorms but pretty easy to stay all 4 if you want.
C/o 2026 its been great (furnished, safe, all students, and about the same per month as the dorms with no shared bedroom, ie comparing apples to apples. It is easy to sublet in summer is easy due to all the premeds and stem kids who get clinical jobs or stay for paid research each summer)

[Anonymous]

My DD is going to BU, and with the 4-year housing guarantee, it really gives peace of mind, especially knowing how expensive Boston is. She once considered living off-campus, but went back to choosing a school dorm due to cost and other factors. The school offers a range of housing options, from older dorms without AC to fairly luxurious apartments, so there’s some variety.

One of my other kids went to a top 25 school that didn’t guarantee housing, and it was a constant struggle to find an apartment lease for the following year every time school started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

Why did you have to pay the rent for the kids studying abroad?
Thats on them to find a subletter or otherwise they still continue to pay rent even if they're abroad.

Don't tell me the lease is under 1 name (yours)? You should have wirked that out prior.

Her DD was also gone. I read it as that each of the kids studying abroad was also paying rent while they were gone, not that OP was covering the rent for everyone.

Correct. The parents of all four roommates had to pay rent while our kids were gone. We had no luck finding subletters because so many kids go abroad spring semester.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know a few older kids (tufts, northeastern, umass, UVM) who found the process of finding an off-campus apt for upper class years very stressful and living off campus not ideal, harder on social life, etc. DC leaning toward only looking at schools that offer 4 years of campus housing, but that is very limiting— mostly LACs. Wondering if the kids we know are outliers or not, how much to weigh the availability of on campus housing in school search. Kid is not interested in Greek or club sports, so worried it will be harder to find their people/ socialize if off campus after first year.

Lots of quality public universities offer on-campus housing for all 4 years. Purely as a trivial nearby example, UVa does. And their upper class housing options range from classic dorms to residential colleges to apartment-like suites.

[Anonymous]

It was important to me since paying for room for 9 months is cheaper than a yearlong rental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem with off-campus housing is that most schools do not provide a list of options. Many landlords are happy to skirt licensing and safety requirements. A family relative (college senior) died in a horrific off-campus group house fire along with two of their roommates. We are still grieving 12 years later

Two of my kids had to rent their senior year. We made sure the property was licensed to rent, had working smoke detectors and we walked through each property to map out an escape route in case there was a fire.

That is horrible . Many colleges do have off campus housing recommendations and often staff and webpages dedicated to helping students navigate leases. It was at almost every school D applied to. Granted they were all top private/ivy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

You would still pay for on campus housing (room and board) whether you're abroad for a semester or not, no? And a meal plan too, right?

Is that standard for most schools?
So w

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

We had this issue too, but finally decided paying the extra rent was preferable to moving all of our DD's things out into storage and then back in again, not to mention finding and vetting someone to sublease her room. It all worked out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another issue with off campus housing is if your kid does study abroad. My DD and her three roommates were all gone for the spring semester and couldn’t find any subletters, so we ended up paying for 12 months of rent when the girls actually lived in their apartment from late August to mid December. It was aggravating.

Why did you have to pay the rent for the kids studying abroad?
Thats on them to find a subletter or otherwise they still continue to pay rent even if they're abroad.

Don't tell me the lease is under 1 name (yours)? You should have wirked that out prior.

I don't think you understand what the PP is saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was important to me since paying for room for 9 months is cheaper than a yearlong rental.

Unless the cost of that 9 month dorm room is jacked up to equal or exceed the cost of an off-campus 12 mo. lease.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem with off-campus housing is that most schools do not provide a list of options. Many landlords are happy to skirt licensing and safety requirements. A family relative (college senior) died in a horrific off-campus group house fire along with two of their roommates. We are still grieving 12 years later

Two of my kids had to rent their senior year. We made sure the property was licensed to rent, had working smoke detectors and we walked through each property to map out an escape route in case there was a fire.

That is horrible . Many colleges do have off campus housing recommendations and often staff and webpages dedicated to helping students navigate leases. It was at almost every school D applied to. Granted they were all top private/ivy

All schools, to include publics, have websites/FB pages dedicated to housing.