When I used to interview a lot of college kids, I found that I could guess accurately within a few minutes of conversation which had lived in a dorm/frat house/whatever and which had lived at home while going to college. The differences in social skills and worldliness/perspective were immense. Was this due to the effects of being surrounded by a bunch of relatively ambitious young people or was it due to the socio-economic selection bias inherent in the decision to live at home while attending school? Although I have read nothing to back up this claim, I presume that there is a positive correlation between high family income and the decision to go "away" for college. Living with one's parents implies going to a local college/university vs. the one which is a tight fit with one's goals. Also, it seems that those kids who live at home socialize with their local friends who, more often than not by virtue of still living in the town where they grew up, are less ambitious and worldly. Causation is hard to tease out, but correlation is definitely present, at least based on my sampling from doing college interviewing in the Cleveland area (another cause of selection bias, of course).
I've seen this to a lesser extent comparing those who go in-state and out-of-state, but by the end of college it becomes more what you've chosen to do at In-State U.
I went out-of-state, then moved back to live at home (HN helped keep me in a wider loop). Relatively unambitious fellow students were the most demotivating part of this.
I'd imagine this pattern would depend on locality. For example, I live in CT and went to school in RI. I chose to live at home to save taking out additional loans for room and board, but I wasn't really separated from campus life, or even college towns for that matter (My parents lived by an art school and a state college).
However, were I do to the same in an area with fewer educational institutions per sq. mile, I may not have had that experience.
I agree. Let's take Boston as the extreme example of where one could choose a nearly "optimal" college while still living at home. Local availability of good education options coupled with the high cost of off-campus housing in the area probably makes the adverse selection bias I observed in Cleveland much weaker in Boston. In Ohio, off-campus housing is generally cheaper than living in a dorm room. However, I'm told that dorms are coveted at places like NYU because the universities effectively subsidize rents compared to market rates.
Very interesting, another single data point. My brother (went to school at the University of Milwaukee) lived at home while attending. Ambition has never been a strong suit of his.
