Don't let your kid move off campus.

[Anonymous]

After sophomore year they will insist that everyone is moving out. They can't possibly live in a dorm or campus apartment. It will be cheaper. The will work to help pay for it. Don't buy any of this. Your student's chances of persisting to graduation drop off a cliff, statistically, once they move off campus. I know. I'm a dinosaur. Flame away. It's the truth.

[Anonymous]

Ok, so share these statistics you reference.

[Anonymous]

Nobody lives on campus through senior year.

[Anonymous]

Do you have any stats to back this up? Signed anecdotally, by off-campus-living undergrad who graduated early & got a graduate degree

[Anonymous]

Anecdotally, I flunked out and I attribute this to bring forced to live off campus as a sophomore.

[Anonymous]

Link?

At my daughter’s school, Wisconsin, you would be seen as a 100% total weirdo if you lived in a dorm as a junior or senior. She stayed in the dorms as a sophomore and even that was pushing it.

[Anonymous]

My kid didn’t drop out, but that place quickly went from four of them (3 girls and one girl’s LTBF) to a flophouse with a violent squatter. The landlord didn’t care if cops weren’t freaking out the neighbors. The cops didn’t care if no one pressed charges. The good kids were all too scared to press charges. We finally bribed out the violent squatter.

[Anonymous]

My college now requires students to live on campuses all three years. The rule has nothing to do with fostering a learning environment. The school just realized that everyone was moving off campus ASAP and the school was losing on housing and dorm fees. So they tripled up old dorms and required everyone to stay on campus thru junior year. Yuck. I moved off after freshman year.

[Anonymous]

That may vary by school. At Michigan nearly all juniors and seniors and many sophomores live off campus. But in my DCs case her off campus apartment was closer to the center of campus than most of the dorms. And it was essentially like private college housing and all students. Anyway all of DCs roommates graduated on time and got good jobs so it seemed to work out. And Michigan has a high grad rate overall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nobody lives on campus through senior year.

I did. Had a single, three squares and no drama. You have a lifetime to maintain a home, enjoy the convenience while you can.

[Anonymous]

All of the people I knew who flunked out of college did so while living in the dorms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My college now requires students to live on campuses all three years. The rule has nothing to do with fostering a learning environment. The school just realized that everyone was moving off campus ASAP and the school was losing on housing and dorm fees. So they tripled up old dorms and required everyone to stay on campus thru junior year. Yuck. I moved off after freshman year.

Yep.

Beyond freshman year the dorms are a money grab for the university.

[Anonymous]

I'm a professor and at my school, it would be extraordinarily rare for a junior or senior to live in a dorm. I would absolutely pity the student whose parents forced it.

[Anonymous]

Do you have any sort of statistic or link to back that up?

-person who moved off campus after sophomore year (along with the other 99.9% of my grade) and did just fine.

[Anonymous]

At many schools, housing is only guaranteed for freshmen and sophomores (some schools even freshmen only)...so even if a student wanted to live in the dorms as a junior/senior (which I agree would be very far out of the norm for pretty much every college student)...that might not be an option...