Living On Campus Vs California State University

As senior high school students are applying for colleges, they often ask themselves whether they will live on campus in college dorms, live off campus with parents or in apartments. Senior high school students have been influenced by their friends or teachers saying that living on campus is necessary to experience the college life. From what I have heard from high school teachers, college life is depicted as having dorm friends, being connected to the school, and attending events of college. However, living on campus is expensive, averaging about 14,00 dollars per year for California State Universities (Cal State.edu); Living on campus adds up to the college tuition, which is about $7000 per year for California State Universities and $13,000

Sara, who is a third-year Cal Poly Pomona student who commutes from San Dimas, about 7 miles from Cal Poly Pomona, answered yes due to the social benefit of living on campus. She explained that living on campus would provide instant friendship with roommate or dorm mates, which she did not experience during her freshmen year of college. She also believed that having to share a lot of things with people who are going under similar challenges as oneself in the college dorms is a part of the college experience. However, Kevin, who is a graduate student commuting from Pomona, 10 minutes from Cal Poly Pomona, answered he would not spend the money to dorm during his freshman year of college because it “involves living with people which I cannot tolerate because I have a high price with my personal time” (Kevin) The answers from the upperclassman college students conflicted with each other. One interviewee believes sharing things with other people when living on campus is a part of the college experience while other believes it is not tolerable because there is a high standard of anti-social living. These contrasting points of views show me that living on campus is not necessary as it is a matter of personal choice and financial reasons. It is not guaranteed that people would live on campus even if they have the money to pay for it

They believe students who live on campus have more support from the social interaction they made while living on campus, which would greatly raise their GPA (Fieldsted, 2012; Johnstone, 2008). Even my college, Cal Poly Pomona require incoming freshmen to live on campus because it would improve students’ performance in college as “student engagement and learning occurs both in and out of classroom” (Cal Poly Pomona). They believe living on campus encourages students’ engagement in the college community and provide an advantage to succeed in their respective