<p>When looking at schools, we all check the percentages of commuters vs. residential students, as the proportion influences the character of the undergrad experience, especially if you are living in the dorm. But is there any uniformity to how the colleges characterize a student living in off-campus housing?</p>
<p>To me, if a student is truly a commuter, they would be driving in from their principal permanent residence (typically, the parental home, within the vicinity of the college, or perhaps an emancipated adult, maybe married, living outside of the university community). And kids who live in university-owned dorms or apartments are clearly residential students. But what about a traditional-age student, away from home, who maybe started out in a dorm and then as an upperclassman rents a local apartment from a private landlord in the university area? These people would tend to participate in the life of the university in a “residential” way. Do admissions offices characterize them as commuters or residents? Has anybody actually asked an admissions office how these students were counted?</p>
<p>If you look at the Student Life section F1 of the Common Data Set for the schools of interest, it breaks out the residential vs. off campus numbers and, helpfully, does so for just the freshman class and then all undergrads.</p>
<p>Does it distinguish between off-campus with parents/off-campus as a non-traditional adult student (“true” commuters) and traditional-age undergrads living away from their permanent residences in off-campus housing?</p>
<p>That is the distinction I’m trying to uncover. They are two very different commodities. The latter are essentially traditional residential students, with a landlord other than the university. The former type of student usually contributes to a different campus character, and is looking for a different experience, with school being seen more as a job than a life. Lumping all "off-campus"students together sheds no light on this.</p>
<p>I understand your intuition that commuter students would be students who commute to college from their principal residence, but what’s all this about driving? Students who take the light rail or ride their bike to college from their parents’ house are still commuters.</p>
<p>-- Signed,
One Time In My Life I Swam to Work But I Never Drove</p>
<p>You may be able to get a hint of the distinction you want by looking at the difference between freshman and all undergrads numbers. Often freshmen are not allowed to live off-campus except if living with their parents, or if non-traditional students. So for most schools the number of off-campus freshmen may be a decent representation of the percent of “commuter” students overall, and a drop in the percent of on-campus students overall probably represents students moving to a nearby off-campus apartment.</p>
<p>This is the standardized definition of “commuter” as promulgated by the US Dept of Edu for college reporting use.</p>
<p>Commuter: A student who lives off campus in housing that is not owned by, operated by, or affiliated with the college. This category includes students who commute from home and students who have moved to the area to attend college.</p>
<p>As suggested, comparing the freshman vs. undergrad figures is what may be most helpful to you, plus the two ways housing is expressed is helpful. So are all the other Student Life factors.</p>
<p>F1. Percentages of first-time, first-year (freshman) degree-seeking students and degree-seeking undergraduates enrolled in Fall 2011 who fit the following categories:</p>
<p>Percent from out of state (exclude international/nonresident aliens from the numerator and denominator)</p>
<p>Percent of men who join fraternities</p>
<p>Percent of women who join sororities</p>
<p>*****Percent who live in college-owned, -operated, or -affiliated housing</p>
<p>*****Percent who live off campus or commute</p>
<p>Percent of students age 25 and older</p>
<p>Average age of full-time students</p>
<p>Average age of all students (full- and part-time)</p>
<p>I don’t think the college has any way to distinguish between ‘living at Mom’s house’ and ‘living in an apartment across the street’. I think what you’ll need to do is some inference by seeing how many students live on-campus, which years those students typically are (ex: maybe most are first 2 years only), how many students are enrolled in those approximate years. You should be able to get this detail from the college’s website. This’ll give you a good idea of how many students moved out of Mom’s house to go to the college.</p>
<p>If a campus limits its on-campus housing to only the first 2 years, as an example, then there’s a good chance that after that point the students move off campus to adjacent and nearby apartments which are virtual dorms and although classified as ‘commuter’ at that point there’s little difference between living in the nearby apartments and living in the on-campus dorms so the term ‘commuter’ in this case is misleading. Some colleges have pretty well-developed private apartments nearby that are occupied mostly by students. You can usually see this if you visit the campus area (or Google street view the area).</p>
<p>Another factor is just the number of students living on campus regardless of the percentage. I think once the number hits a certain point, even if the percentage is smaller, there’ll be enough there to afford a decent ‘on campus experience’.</p>
<p>I checked the number of dorm spaces available to the number of students attending and that gave us a good look at how many students stay on campus all 4 years. For those schools that were borderline, visits gave us a good indication where the “off-campus” housing was–across the street or who knows where.</p>
<p>I think mathmomvt is right (post #5): the key here is to see what percentage of freshmen live on-campus. At many schools it’s just customary for most upperclass students to live in houses, apartments, co-ops, or fraternity/sorority houses, usually in the immediate vicinity of the school. For example, at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, only 37% of undergrads live on-campus, but 98% of the freshmen do. So virtually all freshmen live in the dorms (or “quads” as they’re called at Michigan), and only a small fraction of the sophomores, juniors and senior do—mostly sophomores, I’d guess, with a smattering of juniors and seniors living and working in the quads as RAs. Everyone else moves off-campus. But they’re not “commuters” in any recognizable sense; their lives revolve around campus and its immediate vicinity. In fact, some of the “off-campus” residents actually live closer to the Michigan Union and the Undergraduate Library than some of the “quaddies.”</p>
<p>Contrast that with Wayne State University, a true commuter school in the heart of Detroit. There, only 32% of freshmen live on-campus. That gives you a pretty good idea that a large fraction of the students start out commuting from “home,” i.e., from their parents’ house. Not all those who start out living off-campus will be living at their parents’ house, of course; some may get apartments with friends, some may have been out of school for a while and commute from their own houses or apartments. But it’s a pretty safe bet that if 2 out of 3 freshmen start out living off-campus, a large fraction of them are living with their parents and commuting.</p>
<p>Another factor that may be important to the nature of student life – but hard to get a handle on – is whether or not the college is a “suitcase” school (one where many students live on campus but go home on the weekends). </p>
<p>I don’t know how you get statistics on this. You may just have to ask people.</p>
<p>^^just make sure you ask freshmen and not seniors. We made that mistake and our oldest ended up at a total suitcase college. Most of the senior stuck around on weekends but NONE of the freshmen. There were SIX kids in his dorm that stayed on weekends.</p>
<p>I got good “suitcase” info at one school when I happened to chat with the food service director. I asked how many meals they prepare on a weekday, and how much that headcount drops on the weekends. I hope the colleges will not see this and impose gag orders on their food service people. Janitors would probably also know. They would also know about the pattern of strewn bottles, solo cups, etc.</p>
<p>Suitcase pattern is a big concern, one I share from personal experience. I don’t doubt the freshman suitcase syndrome, mentioned above, but at my school, it was the opposite. It was a small school. As the years went by, people got cars, lost interest in the same-old-same-old, and were more likely to find themselves in a stable dating relationship with someone from a larger, more exciting campus. So the weekend social life was vibrant the first year, but the weekend exodus became greater with every passing year.</p>
<p>However, it does not distinguish between the following situations:</p>
<ul>
<li>Living in off-campus housing but near campus and not in relatives’ home. This can include fraternity/sorority houses, cooperative houses, and private residence halls as well as apartments and the like.</li>
<li>Living with relatives, typically in the same place one lived as a high school student.</li>
<li>Non-traditional student living where s/he lived before attending college.</li>
</ul>
<p>Sometimes, there are hints to be found. For example, San Jose State University has a policy requiring freshmen to live in its residence halls if they are not from within 30 miles or in some non-traditional student categories. The common data set lists about half of freshmen living in its residence halls, indicating that about half of the freshmen are traditional students who moved there to attend college, while the other half are likely to be what people call “commuter” in a colloquial sense. But note that the school also accepts lots of transfer students, who are more likely to be non-traditional students.</p>
<p>This may not be accurate but I would think that schools that have regular scheduled weekend activities such as concerts or plays are more likely to have an active weekend presence of students. My thinking is that schools would not offer so much weekend entertainment if there was no one around to participate.</p>
<p>Clever investigating fieldsports. The back door method of finding out what you want to know :)</p>
<p>On suitcase schools - I think they’re generally comprised of students who go home because they can meaning they’re from the general area of the college - within an hour’s ground journey or so. If a college attracts a lot, if not most, of their students from outside the local area they’re not inclined to be suitcase schools.</p>
<p>Well, yes, but . . . it would be a huge mistake to think that because a school draws a large percentage of its students from the local area, it must be a “suitcase school.” The University of Michigan draws a large fraction of its student body from metro Detroit and smaller cities an hour or less distant (Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti, Toledo, Flint, Lansing, Jackson). But it’s by no means a suitcase school, because the university and the town of Ann Arbor are about the most vibrant, interesting places for college-aged kids in the entire region.</p>
<p>Same with Wisconsin-Madison. Most of the students are in-state, and most of the in-state students come from the Milwaukee or Madison metro areas, the major population centers in the state; but what’s happening on campus and in the student-dominated areas of Madison is just a whole lot more fun and interesting than anything going on in some sleepy Milwaukee suburb or in a quiet residential area away from the campus in Madison. You’d need to be an idiot to go home on weekends, and hardly anyone does.</p>
<p>NYU draws most of its students from the NYC metro area. It’s not the ideal campus-centered environment because students are drawn into the many attractions of the city which tend to pull them off-campus, but whatever its faults, NYU is certainly not a suitcase school. Who wants to go home to boring Westchester or Long Island or New Jersey when you’re living 24/7 in the Village, with all of Manhattan at your fingertips?</p>
<p>I’d say having a large percentage of the student body come from nearby may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a school to be a suitcase school. and even then, I’m not sure I’d draw the line at an hour’s radius. I imagine some schools are so bleak on the weekends that many students would drive well over an hour to get away, which of course contributes to the weekend bleakness. One thing I’m always interested in is what percentage of students have cars on campus. A high percentage usually means students think it’s necessary to have a car to get away from campus for interesting things to do, or to go home, or whatever. A low percentage of students with cars usually means most students don’t think a car is necessary because their needs and wants are being met on campus and in the immediate vicinity, i.e., within walking distance. Schools don’t usually publish this information, but it’s a question we often ask on tours, and surprisingly many tour guides seem to know the answer, which is often very revealing.</p>
<p>On tours one of the things I check out are the various notice boards around campus and when and where they have activities. At Truman State, the notices were 4/5 deep on the board and current. Other schools you could hardly find a notice board with fliers.</p>
<p>"However, it does not distinguish between the following situations:</p>
<ul>
<li>Living in off-campus housing but near campus and not in relatives’ home. This can include fraternity/sorority houses, cooperative houses, and private residence halls as well as apartments and the like."</li>
</ul>
<p>Even that could differ campus to campus. Where I went, fraternity and sorority houses were on campus, owned by the university, and mixed in among the dorms -it would have been silly to have thought of them any differently from dorms in terms of commuting. In other schools, they are off campus, not owned by the university, and a few blocks away, and I suppose that would technically fall under commuting.</p>
<p>I think looking at the OOS numbers can help uncover the suitcase schools. If a school is nearly all instate kids, then there’s a risk that it’s a commuter school unless it’s a big popular state flagship (or flagship-like). </p>
<p>Regional schools tend to be commuter/suitcase. The students either commute from parents’ homes, live on campus during the week and go home on weekends, or live off campus and may also go home on weekends. </p>
<p>Schools that have big sports tend to have more residential students and less suitcase students.</p>
<p>And if the school’s big enough, none of the above may matter much.</p>
<p>Consider the massive University of Maryland at College Park.</p>
<p>It has a substantial commuter population (as might be expected, because it’s located in a highly populated area).</p>
<p>It has a substantial “suitcase” population (as might be expected, since much of the population of Maryland lives within an hour’s drive of the campus, either in the Washington Metro area or in Baltimore and its suburbs).</p>
<p>It has a substantial number of kids who live on campus or in nearby off-campus housing, who center their lives around the campus, and who don’t routinely leave on the weekends.</p>
<p>It has kids who spend as much time as possible in Washington, DC (less than 10 miles away) and don’t center their lives around the campus.</p>
<p>It has a substantial Greek system, but the majority of the students do not go Greek.</p>
<p>Each of these subpopulations includes thousands of people. So no matter what group you belong to, there are plenty of people like you. Does it really matter whether several thousand kids go home on the weekends if there are several thousand others who don’t?</p>