I’m from Europe, when moving to university from high school we usually rent a dorm near campus where we stay from Monday to Friday. On Friday we’ll travel home which is an hour or 2 away from campus tops so we can be with our friends/family in our hometown for the weekend.
In American movies it always looks like going to college basically means starting a completely new life in a new place. Is that true?
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I went to school 235 miles from home. I went home maybe once a month after the first year. That was a lot of driving.
Some are far, some are not.
It depends. I commuted to college. I knew some people who moved across the country for the same college.
Depends on how far the student wants to be from home. I can drive to my college in 15 minutes.
That sounds very typical. People also sometimes choose not to leave their town and work and go to community college. Some kids go across the country.
The more elite the college, often the farther the kids go. Not everyone has the perfect school near them.
58 percent of U.S. high school graduates go to a college within 100 miles of their hometown; 72 percent of students stay in-state. Only 11 percent of students venture more than 500 miles from their hometown.
i went about 1800 miles (2900k) from home. i didnt visit much, not even in summer.
Could be a ten minute drive or a 3000 mile flight. Depends on where they go.
If they grew up in Los Angles and go to Harvard , they’re all the way across the country.
Yeah often times you are. You go to the school that you think fits you the best that you can afford (and will let you in). That often means going far away. This is especially true in smaller states. I remember in high school I made a list of things I wanted out of a college and knew what my budget was and there were only 2 schools that fit the bill. Now both were in my state but a state is about the size of an average European country.
Now in a smaller state you may not even have that kind of choice. There is 1 public university in Wyoming and you have to go to Laramie for it. If you don’t live near there, that’s just the situation
I went to a college about 90 miles away from home (about a 90 minute drive). I either lived in a dorm on campus or an apartment off campus. I only came home maybe 1 weekend a month at most. Maybe once every other month. During the 2 years I lived in a dorm, I came home during the summer. The last year or two when I lived in an apartment, I stayed there during the summer.
The closest college to where I grew up was only a two-year community college and didn’t offer any programs that interested me, and it was 75 miles away. I went to a school about 3000 miles away and only visited my home/family during the summer and winter breaks. Any more would have been very difficult. Since I was traveling between two small towns not near major hub airports, the trip usually involved at least three flights and a full day (or sometimes more) of travel just to get from one to the other.
Depends. Mine was a little under an hour’s drive away, so not *that* far by our standards. Just enough to be annoying because I didn’t live on campus. If I wanted to go back to school where I am now, I could practically walk there in a country that isn’t made to be walkable.
Would I move halfway across the entire country if there was some super prestigious college that I got into/it was the only one offering what I wanted? Sure.
Moving out of state for that sounds like it would typically be a brand name “I got into Yale” thing or a really specific university degree. As of last year, only 24 states allow community colleges to give out bachelor’s degrees, so that could be a factor in having to go to a university in another state instead
Really depends on the person.
For me I chose a university that struck the right balance: far enough away that my mom couldn’t just drop by randomly (she can be really nosy) but close enough that I could drive to her to give her something nice on her birthday.
Some move to the other side of the country, some attend a local school and live at home, and everywhere in between.
I would say most kids go to a school in the state that they/their parents have established residency in because it pretty much always means lower tuition than going to school out of state. But our states can be pretty big. I live in Philadelphia in southeastern Pennsylvania. If someone is from here but wants to go to the University of Pittsburgh in the western part of the state that’s a 300 mile, 5 hour drive (and Pennsylvania is in the bottom half of states in terms of size.) So generally they will live in a dorm or some other type of student housing on or near their college campus, especially their first year or two there, and come home for holidays and summer vacation. Once they are in their later years of college they might get an apartment somewhere with some friends or whatever, or continue to live on campus if they want.
I’m from California and went to school in Indiana. But I also had friends who went to school in our hometown or the next city over.
There’s a ton of variation in how far people go, and there’s pros and cons to every choice.
Worth noting that students who attend public universities in the state they reside in get a hefty discount.
Depends, but it’s not uncommon to go much further away than 1-2 hours. American students tend to pick the school that’s best for them vs. picking what’s close to home in many cases.
I grew up near Chicago, went to college in a Atlanta — a 15 hour drive or 2 hour flight. I went home maybe once or twice a semester and for semester breaks.
I went to college 950 miles from home—about a 14 hour drive. Still, plenty of people choose to stay in-state or at least in the same region. Some people can live at home and commute to school every day.
I went to school about an hour and a half away. I went home for holidays and that’s it
This is gonna be different for everyone. I went to college about 200 miles away from my hometown, in another state. I have friends who went straight across the country to California. I have other friends who continued to live with their parents and went to school nearby.
My daughter will be attending a University about ten miles (16km) from our home (University of Indianapolis). I offered to pay for a dorm room, but she’d rather the family save the money and use it for family vacations. So she’s going to live at home and commute to class with either her car or public bus transportation.
EDIT: When I went to college it was about 120 miles (193km) away from my parent’s home. I lived in the dorms and came home about every two months or so, basically twice during a semester.
I went to college about an hour and half away from my family and I’m really glad I did (even though I really didn’t have an out of state option because I couldn’t afford 70k tuition). It was far enough that I had my own life and was able to have a good amount of independence but close enough that my parents could still be there for me if I really needed them and I could go home to visit my family and hometown friends on the weekend. It was a really good transition into young adulthood.
I’m going abut 8 hours away while all of my friends are staying in state. I’m the only one out of like 6-8 people that are going out of state.
I was about 1000 miles. My brother was 60 miles.
Depends on where you go.
I went to school 500+ miles away from my home town. It’s about a 9 hour drive. Not too close and not too far, although nowhere is really too far for me
Some go to school in their home town. I went halfway across the country personally
I’ll be about 1300 miles by flight.
I went to school 4.5 hours away. So I moved completely into my dorm and visited home every 6 weeks-ish
Some are much farther, some go to local schools and continue to live with family.
80% of my friends went to school within 2 hours of our hometown
My college is only an hour away from my parents house.
There’s no standard, lots of unis will give a tuition discount to students from their own state but attending school in another state is not uncommon either.
This varies substantially.
Some students stay in state to take advantage of in state tuition rates.
Some go out of state.
Some students do college online in order to stay with family.
Highly variable. People are more likely to travel longer distances for more elite colleges.
My college was about a 90 minute drive from my parents’ house. I only went home a few times per year, other than the long breaks between semesters. I lived on campus in college owned housing (dorms) for all four years, which was the standard arrangement at my college, though it’s very common at other colleges for older students to get apartments off campus.
I think I went home less than 10 times in four years. I was about 800 miles (1280 km) away.
4 x Christmas
2 x summer
2 x spring break
That’s all I can think of. Of course, summer was for several months. The others were for about a week.
And that was just between states in the middle of the country. I didn’t have to go to either coast. That would have been much farther. To get home, I had to fly for 2.5 hours.
It depends on what you want. Most of my friends from high school stayed close to our hometown. I personally wanted to get the f out of there, so I had a 200 mile minimum. It was a really horrible, toxic place.
For context, its main claim to fame was being the most northern town with an active KKK chapter, for being 98% white and 70% strict Roman Catholic, and for having the former leader of the American nazi party as the republican house candidate a few years ago…
Depends, but in-state tuition is usually a lot cheaper than out-of-state tuition.
My family always went away to university and lived full time on campus.100 to 300 miles away from home.
My undergrad was about an eight hour drive from my family, my grad school was about a 20 hour drive from my family, and my internship was about a 40 hour drive from my family.
Like others have already said, it depends on the student. I didn’t want to be far from home, so I went to a small college in Ohio that’s a 2.5-hour drive away. Despite being fairly close, I only went home during breaks, mainly because I didn’t have a driver’s license or a car at that time. At the other extreme, I had a classmate from Alaska (about 6,100km away), and knew another student from Hawai’i (about 7,200km away).
Some students, however, stay at home and drive, walk, or bike to campus. They are sometimes referred to as commuter students. Some colleges tend to have more commuters than so-called “traditional” students, and this is sometimes reflected in the campus (e.g. little or no on-campus housing, no dinner options in the cafeteria, few or no extracurricular activities like sports, etc.). Still others take all their classes online, especially if the school is not located in their hometown.
One of my kids was 11 hours away in another state, one was 5 hours away in same state and another 4 hours away
I lived at home with my parents and commuted to the local university every day. My brothers went to a university about 3 hours away (but still in Texas). Several of my high school friends went to an out-of-state university.
Public universities usually charge cheaper tuition rates for residents of the state the university is located in – for example, Texas residents will pay less in tuition at the University of Texas than students not from Texas.
I went to college about a 2-hour drive from my hometown. I probably went home once every 4-6 weeks. Most people stayed for the weekends – that’s when we did the most partying.
I went to school halfway across the country, from Virginia to Texas. It was roughly 22 hours driving time, or about 3.5 hours to fly to Houston, and then another 90 miles from there.
In contrast, about half of my graduating class of ~420 went to U. Virginia or Virginia Tech, which were about 1.5 hours and 4 hours away, respectively. Maybe 10% went to other in-state schools, most of which were comparable distances. Another 25-30% or so went out of state, while staying with in an eight-hour drive. That left about 10% of us farther away than that.
I’d drive or fly down in August, come home at the end of the semester in December, go back in January, and come home again at the end of the academic year in May. I think I came home once for the week-long Spring Break in March, and I flew back during the spring of my senior year to visit law schools. I definitely wasn’t coming home on weekends.
Well, there’s only 4-year colleges in like 3 cities in my state, plus since I went to college some distance learning options. The only truly rigorous one for majors I was interested in was still in a city a couple airplane flights from home with a bloody cold winter. Therefore I didn’t go to college within my state, I went to the lower 48. For kids from my rural area I’d say going very far from home is the norm for anyone attending 4-year college or going to a specialized trade school.
I went to community college for 3 years and still lived at my parents house during that time, then when I transferred to a 4 year university I was in another state, not getting home in one day without a flight
Four hours for me. The key is to stay in state because it’s cheaper but to go far enough away that your parents don’t want to drive down for the weekend.
My friend was from Maryland and went to school in Indiana. She wanted her daughter to go to her alma mater. She ended up at a state school about four hours away but not at her first choice. Another friend whose daughter is the same age had her kid go to community college while living at home.
Personally I think it’s important to go away to school. College is more than just academics. It’s a place to find yourself and grow up away from your parents’ input. You find great friends.
I drove 4 hours for both undergrad and grad, would stay for months at a time.
I teach high school, and while some kids do go for away for college, most of my students tend to go between 2 and 4 hours away. Far enough to be independent, but close enough to be a quick trip home if needed.
I went to school 2200 miles away. I guess I did go further than most of my friends, but it also wasn’t treated like anything all that unusual.
You can go anywhere you get in. In town, an hour away, across country. The price is also a factor. In state community college or university is less expensive. Out of state or private college-more expensive.
i go to school in state so it’s about a 1 hour 45 minute drive on a good day. average i’d say 2 hours drive