I’ve done both. What you miss out on when staying home is more than the partying; you miss out on striking out on your own (at least partially) and maturing as a true social person. But at the same time, you save lots of money that you can spend on other things.

While commuting, you miss out on interaction outside the classroom with your classmates and other fellow students. And once again, it’s not all drinking and partying either. There are other social activities far more important than that.

It all depends on the person though and the family’s financial situation. I’ve known lots of people who have a good time at college (living in the dorms or student housing) but they never complete what they set out to do.

Good luck to you.

Depends what you want. If you don’t stay in the dorms, you might lose the experience of cafeteria food, noisy inconsiderate fellow students who make a lot of noise or to pass time play or bounce the ball off the walls in the hallway outside your room, sing badly or party when you need to study.

Seriously, you can still join clubs, study and do research at the library and be a part of campus life. So you have the best of both worlds by staying home where you have more privacy, and it’s a lot cheaper. You can still visit your friends at the dorm and invite your friends to your home for visits, and meetings, too.

and unless you have a friend whose room you visit a lot, you’lkl miss them.I lived at home during college. First with my parents, then with my wife. Living at home has pros and cons. The atmosphere is better for studying at home. Its cheaper. You willing ,hopefully, have your mother around to feed you. The down side is that your parents still want to keep an eye on you and know what you’re doing. Also, many of the fun activities in the dorms and such are impromptu and unless you have a friend whose room you visit often, you’ll miss many of them. The main thing you may miss, though, is developing the close friendships in college you only gain from living with a person. Now that I’m out of college and much older, I don’t have the strong friendships from college that others have since they lived on campus. Also, one of the things you learn at college is maturity and responsibilty. If you live on campus, apply yourself to learning more than fun, and succeed at gaining an education and a future without constant parental help, you will better off for it. So, I guess it gets down to what you want from your college experience. Match up that to which living arrangement will do the most for you during the next few years and for the rest of your life.

My personal experience has been that it’s better to stay on campus. I find that you get more into the campus life and, therefore, more into the school itself. It may not seem like too big of a deal, but I commuted for 3 years before dropping out of college.

In the case of staying in your home town, the campus should be close enough to your house where you can stay on campus until later at night to do “studying” in the dorms and partying, and still be able to get home anytime you want.

You can still make college friends and hang out with them so in the social arena yes it can still be “good”. Here in VT, the University of VT decided that students must live on campus for the first two yrs even if they are from right next door which I think is BS but I didnt go to college to hang with the hippies but rather to get a degree.

You’ll be a lot more involved in college life if you stay on campus.