Hey, I'm back, got a little more time now, and judging from your posts, it looks like you've really thought this through. Let me give you direct links to those topics I was telling you about, where myself and other satisfied commuters tell you more about what its like to commute.
Any satisfied commuters out there? Any satisfied commuters out there? (version 2)
Now, regarding some of your cons for commuting...
- Feel like I’m going to work = commuting.
Hmm, well, you're going to be going to work anyway after graduation, and being able to separate your school life from your home life is a BIG plus in my opinion (I'm pretty sure someone else mentioned it in one of the topics I linked you too).
- Need a functioning car for ALL FOUR YEARS.
Buy a reliable used car, drive carefully, and hope and pray for the best.
- Additionally, gas money = $$$
Still, not as much money as living on campus, especially if you have a car with even average gas mileage (around 25 MPG or so). I spend maybe $30 a week on gas, so that's $120/month, about $720 for a 6 month semester. Still, well below not only the room and board expense of living on campus (not to mention the other expenditures, you wouldn't be enjoying home cooking, instead you'd have to pay through the nose for cafeteria food or buy the stuff yourself)
- Dreary campus.
That's why you commute, you wouldn't have to live there.
- Too many Northport-ers/too familiar.
Can't really say much about this, but remember, you're not living there, you'd be there for what, 6 hours a day on average, not 24.
- HUGE lecture halls = HUGE classes.
At our college, some of the entry level classes are packed, and I hear that the business major classes are kinda packed, but as a CS major, we rarely have full classes, so I guess it'd depend on your major and how popular it is.
- Bigger than Binghamton
I biked around campus my first 3 years, that helped shrink the distance between classes a LOT.
- Will never have THE college experience.
It's overrated really. Just because everybody else does it, doesn't mean it's what you have to do, I believe that myself and others have spoken a little bit more about this at length in other topics, and I'll be frank, for the first week, maybe two, you might regret your decision to commute, but once you start seeing the advantages in your day to day life, you won't regret it anymore.
A little after I first came here, I was talking with some other freshman in one of my classes, and I told them that I commuted, and much to my surprise, one of them looked kinda downcast and said 'Man, you're so lucky, I wish I could live at home.'
- Lack of school unity – half a commuter school.
Eh, my school's been called a 'suitcase school' before, since everybody heads back to their homes Friday afternoon, or so I've been told.
- Those that commute, originally plan to do so, in my opinion.
This wasn't the case for me, I thought I was going to do the 'average' college experience too, dorms and everything, until I made that decision to commute to college instead, and I'm glad I did.
- * Going to the same school for Med. School as undergraduate isn’t necessarily good. Fierce competition with others Stony Brook undergraduate graduates.
Can't really speak about this one, a little outside my area of expertise, but remember that if your college is like a lot of others, you're going to run into a bunch of folks on their parents' dime who really don't give a darn about their grades or anything else scholarly for that matter, you'll probably be fine!
Anyway, I hope this helps, and check out the other two topics and read the responses there, it seems like a lot of commuters don't post here, but we managed to get some of them together in those topics!