18 Dec 2020
The decision regarding Living on Or Off-Campus depends upon various individual circumstances that must be kept in account while keeping in mind the pros and cons of both options. This article will present a comparative view of both options so that you can decide accordingly.
If you're going to study in a school or university outside your home residency, then you might be confused about living on-campus or off-campus. This decision indeed has a direct impact on your studies, health, finances, and emotional life. Therefore, it is important to decide logically.
You have to make a decision based upon your past experiences (if any) or based upon a comparative analysis of available options. The decision will depend upon various factors and the clashing family's circumstances, individuals' preferences, and the stakes attached to living on or off-campus.
In this article, we will compile a few factors that must be considered before deciding about living on-campus or off-campus. Additionally, we will present compiled data to elaborate on the pros and cons of both situations, which will ease out your complications related to this important decision.
As a student -irrespective of the level of studies- one must always experience extreme challenges of efficiently managing limiting finances. Because most of the time, students are not independent and have a limited amount to be spent every month. Therefore, you must ensure how much financial flexibility you have to live on campus or off-campus.
Living expenses are one of the categories that come under financial management for a students' life. Therefore, you must always consider what sort of benefits will be attached if you accommodate an on-campus residence and off-campus life. These benefits could be in the form of various facilities like TV, kitchen, internet access, utilizes, meal arrangement, cleaning expenses, laundry, and bills, etc.
Another important factor to be considered is transportation expenses, which creates a big problem if students live off camps, therefore one must also decide whether they have enough money for transportation, and enough time for the travel on or off-campus, before finalizing the decision.
The privacy issue is very much important for some students, as they don't feel at ease in being much socializing all the time, in terms of reinforced socialization through roommates. Similarly, some students might work beside studies, so they need privacy. Therefore you must decide according to the ease of dealing with strict curfews, dorm rules, RA's restricting measures, or communal bathrooms.
Food is, of course, a major routine issue for anyone living away from home. On-campus, the problem of strict meal schedules, the same taste, fixed timings, and limited excess exists.
While off-campus though options are open but cooking food becomes a big headache. Thus, you should decide according to your cooking skills and stamina of forbearance.
Your company greatly impacts your everyday life. If you are living with some roommate of your understanding nature, then to won't be a problem. However, most of the time, the clashes of timing, routines, study, and work schedules, and nature of communication severely impact studies, health, and other matters. Therefore, carefully decide your decision.
Last but not least is the security and medical issues, not all the off-campus houses come with security guards and medical care facility like the one available on campus, or maybe even the same facilities are not available on campus. Therefore, decide according to your need and desire.
With this, we are further presenting you with ways to reduce expenditure by highlighting the pros of both choices. We will also include some of the cons in both cases so that a rational decision could be devised.
Proximity to class
On-campus your class is near your hostels, so not only it eases out the timely reach but could also reduce physical hardship and commuting problems that students face daily.
Costly
While on the other hand, hostels reduce chances of off-campus activities and routine needs, but it may alternatively be even more costly owing to the available facilities.
No or Minimum Commuting Cost
As elaborated earlier, you will hardly have to take transportation if you're living on campus.
Limited Privacy
Sharing rooms, bathrooms, dorms, tv lounges, kitchen, laundry, and much more become common on campus. And this largely impacts your privacy need.
Amenities
Various amenities in the form of essential furniture, equipment, and machineries like Landry machine, oven, and microwaves are available on campus depending upon the system.
Concentration Challenge
Related to the previous point, on-campus living can also disturb your concentration by diverting it into other activities besides studying, like playing games, talking, and partying more.
Meal Plan
Another important pro is the schedule food availability for the whole week, which suits students the best because they rarely have enough time to cook food for themselves or to pay for a cook separately.
Classification Based Housing
Another essential concern is the classification like gender, age, and year for devising the specific rooms for students. This limits the choices for rooms interior.
Socializing and Way-out to Depression
Hostels on campus give a great socializing opportunity, starting from your roommates to the other hostel members you get to know many people. And this improves your socializing skills. In the opposite case, you may feel alone all the time and might suffer from depression.
Roommates
Living on campus also takes away the choices about your roommates. Thus, you may have to bear an accompanying roommate who does not match your nature. And this will ultimately affect your whole routine.
Security
Most of the colleges and universities have 24/7 on-duty patrols to keep strict maintenance of security. So, families hardly worry about this security concern.
Irresponsible Behavior
Lake of commuting needs and travelling might make one irresponsible and skip schedules, converting the ease into a con of this routine.
Sleeping Hours Flexibility
Living on campus cuts short a lot of time that students otherwise face in the form of getting early for buses, waiting, and travelling time, etc. Also, they don't have to wait in the closing hours for the buses and busy roads. So ultimately, they can get more time to sleep and study.
Boring Meal Cycles
The fixed meals on campus might offend you and limit your meal choices as its human nature to get offended by a continuously repeated meal, no matter how good it is.
Housing Resources
Most on-campus hostels provide facilities like internet and TV, which may sound cheap but will eventually cost you a lot if you have to arrange in a private off-campus place
Hygiene and Health Concern
Although there may be cleaning, cooking, and medical services available on campus yet, the cooking may be unhygienic, and cleaning may be irresponsibly carried out which can create health-related issues for students.
Unmatched Experience
living on campus in hostels with roommates and hostels members indeed creates a new experience for students where they learn many new skills like communications, cooking, shopping, and much more. And all these opportunities cannot simply be parallel to living off-campus.
A Strong Sense of Connection
A sense of community develops on-campus where there's always something that is going on, and there are less likely chances to get bored or to feel alone and feel depressed.
Choice in Space and Type of Housing
Living off-campus gives you great freedom of choice in hunting the type of house you need for yourself in terms of spacing, interior, and some beneficial facilities.
The same choice of housing can be a headache for you if you are residing in a densely populated city, where it's difficult to find an off-campus place.
Choice of Roommates
Again, roommates will be of your choice, or you may not even have to bear a roommate if your avail a separate room off-campus.
Finding good roommates off-campus could itself be a headache because most students find it better to live on campus rather than dealing with some off-campus housing.
Privacy
Your privacy concern will mainly be satisfied with living off-campus because you won't have to bear the burden of roommates, Warden's continuous checking, the closing of hostel gates at fixed timings, and strict rules and regulations in other routine matters.
Irresponsible Behavior
Freedom from any privacy control can result in irresponsible behaviour for yourself because strict schedules sometimes dictate beneficial for students to study and good company.
Independence and Adulthood
Of course, everyone has particular needs, and living off-campus gives you a type of independence to tackle your matters responsibly, like budget management all by yourself.
The same independence might drive you towards irresponsible behaviour and ill activities that could divert your academic focus.
Meal Timings and Choices
A very important pro of living off-campus is freedom for the meal timing and choices, depending upon your mood.
However, the same freedom of meal choice can become a burden in terms of time and skill for cooking or managing a separate cook within a limited budget.
Part Time Jobs
While living off-campus, a student can look for other things like finding a side job for managing their budget.
Managing your laundry, cleaning room, pressing, and doing all sorts of groceries will come as your responsibility besides academic pressure.
Transport Need
Of course, a significant issue of living off-campus is commuting or transport needs. The student goes through a lot of headaches in finding the right transport, waiting for it. Reliance on public transport, hefty fares, and much more while living off-campus
Increase Responsibility
As elaborated earlier, living off-campus comes with varying responsibilities among which paying off various bills also comes in.
Missed Experience
Yet another con of living off-campus is the fantastic series of adventures and experiences that a student only gets while living on campus.
Depression
There is likely a chance that the student starts to feel loneliness in a separate residency, and this might lead to depression and will affect their studies and other life matters.
Lack of security
There may be no specific security measures where you're living off-campus, and that's a very serious issue for families for the security reasons who send their children off to study.
There are a significant number of thoughts that comes with the choice of on-campus and off-campus living decision. Each option has its pros and cons and needs intense consideration to go towards a logical conclusion.
The decision most certainly will depend upon the type of residency, whether on-campus or off-campus and the various benefits attached to each choice.
The decision will also be affected by the requirements of your studies; for example, a PhD research student might need to spend a lot of time on campus so he or she will go with on-campus residency.
Thus, the final decision is up to you, what we can do is to suggest to you some ways to reduce the overall expenditure, whether it's an on-campus or off-campus residency.
This section presents an outline for ways to reduce your expenditure, whether you are living on-campus or off-campus. These ways must be given thoughts while comparing the pros and cons of both choices. These ways are:
We hope that this article will help you to sort out the decision regarding your choice of residency off campus or on campus. For money transfer services, do not hesitate to get in touch with the ACE Money Transfer
