Live at College or Commute? Which is Better for You?

I had to answer this very question myself when I decided to enroll at a college about 40 miles from my house. Both commuting and living in a dorm on campus have their advantages and disadvantages, let's look at both.

If you want to commute, you will be using your car a lot (or if you can find public transportation that will probably be your main method) so you need one that can get good mileage. Look for four cylinder cars instead of bigger six or eight, as they are quick gas guzzlers.

Also, if it is a long drive, is it worth the inconvenience? My drive was an hour if no one was there. However, since I had a lot of morning classes and was stuck in work traffic for people trying to get to NY, I had to leave my house two, sometimes three hours before class.

With traffic like that, there is also a high possibility of accident, speeding tickets (it's actually hard not to speed on the NJ Parkway), and a tired feeling from having to leave so early (I had an 8am class once and I had to be out of my house by 5am to get there on time, not fun).

But, it can save you a lot of money, since dorms tend to cost a lot, you don't have to worry about bad room mates and weird regulations at the dorm. And for those of you with severe allergies, you never have to put yourself in danger of a callous room mate (a friend my mine has to go through this daily and he has had 5 room mates transfer out because they did not care about his allergies).

What about the dorm? Well, it's obviously closer, but it does usually cost a lot more. However, if there is a slim difference in price, you won't have to worry about gas prices going up. You also have a much lower chance of accident, stress, and other such poor factors of commuting.

However, you do have the possibility of bad room mates, higher possibility of violence or sexual assault at the dorm, being robbed, and so on.

If you can manage the price, dorms are usually better, but again there are problems with both. If the college is about a twenty minute drive from your house, as my first college was, I would just commute there. With long distances, sometimes it is not worth the lower cost to drive an hour or two out to your college (especially just an hour or two class). You can miss up to five hours of your day just driving, making homework harder, and giving you less time for work of recreation.