Finding the Off-Campus Housing Fit

Thanksgiving break is an ideal time to discuss your college student's plans for living arrangements for the next academic year. So, I'm excited to present this guest blog post by Jackie Schwirian. Jackie is a Leasing Manager at one of the large, college student-focused apartment complexes in Stillwater, and she has some valuable insights to share with students and parents before they seek out off-campus housing.

While college life is filled with many new experiences for students, it’s also filled with many new responsibilities and decisions. For parents of college students, helping to choose a safe, reliable, and value-worthy off-campus home for their son/daughter to live can be a daunting process filled with many obstacles and hidden costs.

Attracted to Cheap

When students focus on “cheap,” safety and reliability are often left out-of-focus, leaving the student in disarray when problems arise. Before parents and their son/daughter decide on an apartment, the following questions should be considered:

• What happens when a landlord is not available if a maintenance problem arises?
• What if the landlord repeatedly comes into the apartment unannounced?
• What if the heating bill is well over your allotted budget for the winter months?
• What happens if the roommate(s) refuse to share the cost of the internet and cable TV bills?
• What if the roommate(s) refuse to pay his/her share of the rent?

Finding the Off-Campus Housing Fit

Safety and reliability are the most important, but helping your son/daughter find an apartment (and community) that fits their lifestyle are just as important. For example, some apartments cater to the full-time student with a heavy class load by offering study rooms; some do not. If specific housing options are not listed on the apartment’s website, students and their parent(s) could find a benefit to browsing social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get an idea of what residents and leasing professionals are sharing about the apartment and community.

Wake-up Call

While each apartment is different, the management responsible for leasing the apartment(s)/property will likely stay the same. Oftentimes, websites and leasing professionals omit hidden costs such as utility charges, which some tenants wouldn’t necessarily consider when calculating the overall leasing costs.  Have your student take time to read the lease carefully and ask the leasing agent to go over the lease with your student. Oftentimes students come up with valuable questions when the lease is reviewed in detail with the leasing agent. 

• Before your son or daughter hears the words “sign here,” take time to research the safety, reliability, and convenience of an apartment community to maximize your student’s experience and put you and your student at ease with the next off-campus housing decision.

-Jackie Schwirian, Leasing & Marketing Manager, The Reserve on Perkins 

Help Your Student Avoid Electronic Distractions in Class

There’s a name for students who try to hide their phones in their laps while they attend class- “crotchgazers”. You know how annoying it is when you’re trying to have a family meal or just speak to your child without the interruptions of constant texting or Tweeting. If you’re like me, there’s nothing more irritating than having your child half-heartedly answer your questions while he stares at the cell phone in his lap. Now, imagine how maddening it is for a professor trying to communicate with 25, 75 or 205 crotchgazers in a classroom.

One disadvantage to college students being constantly connected is that they’re well, constantly connected. That means that even while students are physically in class and honestly trying to learn, they are also incessantly being vibrated away from the work at hand. In many ways it’s not their fault, it's ours. Parents have been known to panic if we don’t hear from them for a couple of days, so they know that if they don’t reply to us with at least an “ok” or even a “k” we just might freak out and call the campus police to conduct a welfare check on them.

Today’s college students feel compelled to check and reply to texts, Tweets, Facebook posts and the like, so cell phones themselves, the very same magical device we all rely on to keep us connected are also the same devices that keep students distracted and damage their ability to fully engage in class and learning. While almost every college or certainly every individual professor has policies against the use of electronics in the classroom, the problems persist. Students know that if they’re careful enough, they can fly under the professor’s radar, but at what cost? Students who allow themselves to become distracted by every chirp or vibration of their phone are not only wasting the money they spent to be in the class, they are cheating themselves out of learning for something they can easily access during the other 20 hours every day in which the are not in a classroom. 

The best advice you can give your student on this subject is to suggest he turn off his phone while in class and catch up with friends, and you too, once he leaves the lecture hall.You can help out even more by asking him to tell you his class schedule and only contacting him when you know he is not in class. 

Keep Applying for Scholarships

Many times students and parents will ask the best ways to win scholarships. While there are obvious ways to improve your chances of winning scholarships like earning high grades, being involved on campus, and submitting excellent applications, see the post about scholarship application advice there are several things your child needs to remember while applying.

1. No scholarship is too small. Some students simply don’t apply for small scholarships of $100.00 to $500.00 because they only see the difference between $100.00 and their $9,000.00 tuition and fees bill. But, instead of just looking at the difference, look at what $100.00 is worth. When I see $100.00, I see some textbooks, a couple of tanks of gas, a few weeks of groceries, and some extra cash for an emergency. 
2. Always do the math. If your child is working part time to help finance college, how many hours would it take him to earn $100.00 to $500.00 after taxes? Most college students earn minimum wage or pretty close to it, so after taxes they clear about $6.00 per hour. It would take the average student about 83 hours to bring home $500.00. That’s a month of working 20+ hours per week! Even if your child spends only two hours per week during the academic year completing and submitting scholarship applications and only wins $500.00, he still comes out ahead.
3. Scholarships are free money, but don’t treat them that way. Some students win big scholarships and think they can promptly quit their part time job, or spend the money on non-educational expenses. These are bad ideas for a few reasons:

• Scholarships are intended to help students afford college so the funds should always go either directly to the college or to pay for college related expenses.

• Unless the student is in his senior year and expects to graduate on time and not pursue graduate education, the money should be saved in a separate account for college related expenses. Otherwise, the student may run through his scholarship money before he finishes college.
• Scholarships are extra, unexpected funds and therefore should not be relied upon as a steady stream of financial support. Many students have lost scholarships in their junior or senior year due to low grades, missed deadlines, or changing their major to one not supported by the scholarship fund.

Is the Honeymoon Over?

By the middle of the fall semester some freshmen start to realize that college classes are harder that they expected, their roommate’s once innocuous habits are more annoying than they thought they would be, and the dining hall food is starting to get a little too predictable. In other words, the honeymoon is over. This is a typical setback that many students face at about this time of year. If you think that your child is feeling a little down about college in general, rest assured that he’s not alone, and there are things that can be done to revitalize his campus experience before the end of the semester.

• Recommit to classes. This includes attending every class, even when it’s cold outside in the morning! Also, remind him that just because many other students have started to slip behind in class assignments and readings doesn’t mean that he can. Suggest he make a pledge to catch up on class work and set aside a few evenings or an entire weekend to spend in the library doing just that. Remind him that having fun is just fine as long as he’s finished his work first!

• Find a “happy place” on campus. Sometimes students just need to take a mental vacation from the hustle and bustle of college life. Students who find a quiet, peaceful place, or a few, on campus can use their time there to mentally regroup each day. This habit makes it easier to handle the little ups and downs that life will throw at them. a quiet corner of the library, some headphones, and twenty minutes of time is often enough to relax and recharge.

• Get a full night’s sleep. College students almost never get enough sleep. A full eight hour rest is rare especially if they are constantly awakened throughout the night by texts and tweets. Suggest that your student get to bed an hour earlier than he now does and recommend that he either turn off his phone or leave it in a place where it will not disturb his sleep.

• Too far to come home. If your student attends college too far from home for a weekend visit, maybe you can meet somewhere in the middle. Students seem to love a weekend at a hotel where they leave their cares behind on campus and focus on studying, sleeping and enjoying a few hearty meals with family.