As much as we might have loved the short walk to classes, the unlimited toilet paper supply and having so many of your best friends right down the hall from you, moving off campus into an apartment or house opens up for so many more things to love and appreciate.
Depending on where you are looking to apply to for off campus housing, each place is going to offer you more or less depending on your price range and location off campus. Newer built apartments go for upwards of $900 per month for rent. For some people, having a higher rent to get their own room, bathroom, good views or nice furniture is more important to them then having a lower rent, unmatched furniture, views or a shared bedroom. The newer apartments such as The Rise, The Metropolitan or The Edge also often include things like pools, gyms or free tanning for those who are interested.
Other apartments go for a lot cheaper per month, but usually require two or more people to share a room or a bathroom. You can find places with larger rooms and smaller living rooms or the opposite, State College offers a lot of different layouts. Places like The Graduate, Town Square, The Collegian and The Palmerton go for around the same rates for those who are on a lower budget for rent.
There are also nice apartments that are farther away from campus, leaving you with a good monthly rent, but would require you to either get an on-campus parking pass, or have to rely on a bus to get you to and from your apartment to your classes everyday. Places like The Bryn, The Retreat and Toftrees are a few of these places, typical for someone who doesn’t mind being farther away from campus or the downtown areas.
As you make your way into your junior and senior year, you usually have a set group of friends and want to move in all together. This is when the house search in State College becomes a lot more popular. The house lottery is something that has become a major stressor in peoples’ lives. With limited supply of houses available each year, and the large amount of people who want to live in a house, most people end up not getting the house they want, or any house at all. Since housing is done so early in the year, tours and applications are due in after only a few months of being back at school, so it’s important to really search well in advance and make sure you and your roommates are all interested and agree on a place, because if you are one minute late to submitting, your odds of getting the house are very slim.
No matter where you live, there are many pros and cons to living off campus. A big one is having a kitchen. Ditching the meal plan and being able to make meals based on what you want to eat is one of the biggest reasons why people move to an apartment or house after their freshman year. If you don’t mind waking up slightly earlier for class, since your walk won’t be right outside your dorm room door, apartments and houses downtown allow you to really feel like you’re at home.
