After freshmen year, students are allowed to choose their own housing, which can be a difficult decision: apartment or dorm.

Thinking ahead

It is wise to think in advance about location of a potential residence, whether it be off campus or on campus.

Alice Fang, junior in LAS, lived in Illini Tower her freshman year, and said the location was very convenient.

“Illini Tower was close to my classes and I felt safe during the evening most of the time around the tower because there were many students walking around,” Fang said.

Another advantage of living on campus can be that students are likely to concentrate more on academics.

For Abby Valek, junior in FAA, living on campus motivates her to complete her projects because the architecture studio is close to her residence.

Valek said the pressure can be intense as deadlines approach but her proximity to the encourages her to complete assignments.

Distractions

Downsides to campus living can be noise level, high expenses and laziness.

Fang said when she lived at Illini Tower, she tended to procrastinate.

“I had a bad habit of waking up late back then. Now that I live off campus, I wake up earlier than when I used to live in Illini Tower because I need more time to arrive on campus,” she said.

Ying Zhang, junior in LAS, said on-campus residences have a relatively higher noise level compared to off-campus housing because students are likely to have parties. Zhang said this made her to want to live off campus.

Pricing

The price of housing is generally higher on-campus compared to housing off-campus.

Lin Lin, a law student, started living at One North, which is located off campus, this semester.

She said the more affordable price of the apartment was the main reason she chose to live there.

“I only pay about half of the rent of on-campus apartments,” she said. “I am also very fond of the facilities that One North offers, which are swimming pools and one floor of the gym.”

Commuting

Lin commutes by bus every morning, which takes about 10 minutes.

“It is not too uncomfortable to commute through bus to campus, although it is annoying to wait for the bus to arrive every day,” she said.

Test the property

Wei Yang, graduate student in computer science, lived off campus in Savoy for a year.

Yang mainly used the shuttle run by the apartment, which takes 15 minutes to get to campus and stopped at a few locations.

Fang recommended that students should walk around the residences they are interested in at night and gauge the noise level in that neighborhood.

“The best way is to meet someone who had lived in the apartment that you want to live in because the landlord cannot tell you everything,” she said. “In my case, I did not know that apartments on Green Street were noisy until I had lived there.”

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