By Jounghun Kim |Staff Writer|
Living on or off campus can drastically change your college experience. There is no set answer to which is better.
Here are some pros and cons to living on campus.
First, it is easy to make connections with people in your housing environment. You can make friends and get closer much easier.
Second, it is physically closer to campus than an off-campus apartment. You don’t have to waste time fighting traffic and hunting for parking spaces before class. You can sleep longer and you save a lot of money on gas.
Third, you don’t have to worry about any hidden costs.
Through the room and board costs you do not have to be concerned with utility and cable bills, buying furniture, paying for repairs., which are all covered.
There are also some cons to living on campus.
For instance, living on campus can cost more than living off-campus.
While there may be no hidden costs, but you have to pay more. For example, housing service charge and housing activity fee.
Second, there are also many regulations that are put into plan when living on-campus. For example, you cannot drink alcohol in your room and you can only smoke in designated areas.
Many students choose to live on campus, but some have no other choice like international students.
Because most of the international students do not have a house in United States so they make CSUSB their home, which bring in different opinions about the matter.
Jiwon Choi is an international student from South Korea. She has been living on campus since 2012. Choi said living on campus is good because of the safety.
Campus police are always patrolling around campus and nobody can enter the dorms without the card key.
Furthermore, every room has a kitchen so she can save lots of money on eating.
However in the Arrowhead Village, one cannot open the windows in the living room, so Choi cannot get fresh air when she cooks.
They do not have a noise control system between the upstairs and downstairs in the dorm. She has been stressed a lot because of noise from upstairs.
Jaesang Rho is another international student from South Korea. He has also been living on campus since 2012.
Rho feels living on campus is a little boring. He does not own a car, so it is hard to go grocery shopping.
“Only two things make me to want to live on campus. First, it is close to school. Second, I can have priority to add classes,” said Rho.
“It is fun when you have good roommates,” said Victor Garcia who has been living on campus for four years. “It’s not fun when you don’t have a good roommate. I live on campus because of convenience. It is easy to go to school and come back home.”
Jacob Saludes has been living on campus for one month. He transferred from another college and he lived at home before transferring to CSUSB.
Saludes chooses to live on campus because it’s convenient for him, and so far has not encountered any problems.
Living on campus is a good learning experience even though it may be costly. You get to meet new people, be closer to campus and have advantages like priority registration.
It is definitely something to experience!
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