My best friend, Michael, and I were recently shopping trying to determine where we would live starting in the fall of the next school year. We both spent the last semester on campus fulfilling Georgia Southern's freshman year requirements and we would both quickly agree that it definitely had its pros and cons. Before we got started, we sat down and took a look at what on- and off-campus housing had to offer using a cost-benefit ratio. While living on campus is great because you can walk to class faster, you're closer to the dining hall, and you have the ability to go to the library without looking for parking; Due to the financial, social, and personal burdens of schoolwork and grades, living on campus is an issue that I believe is a major factor in low grades. Off-campus housing, with its wide variety to choose from, can provide students with the freedom they need to be themselves, the ability to hide away in their room when it's time to study or visit one of the many services provided by the community when they feel like socializing, and they provide all of this at a fraction of the cost of on-campus housing, even taking into account utilities, food, and gas. The financial implications are by far the easiest to determine. On-campus housing costs at Georgia Southern University typically range from approximately $2,300-3,900 per semester. These prices are all-inclusive meaning that electricity, water, garbage, and even cable and internet are all included in the price in addition to being fully furnished at move-in; however, when you take into account that on-campus leases are only 4 months long, you start to r...... middle of paper ...... July 5, 2008. George Fox. April 22, 2014 .Georgia Southern University. "University accommodation rates". 2014. South Georgia. 22 April 2014 .Mattioli, Dana. “The Pros and Cons of Living Off Campus.” The Wall Street Journal (2007). Naidus, Alex. “21 Lessons You Learn from Living Off-Campus.” Buzzfeed, August 11, 2013. Office of Research and Evaluation. The impact of living on or off campus during freshman year. Irvine: University of California, 2007. Seow-Eng Ong, Milena Petrova, and Andrew C. Spieler. “The Demand for College Student Housing: An Empirical Analysis.” Journal of Housing Research 22.2 (2013): 141-164. Vallient, Paul M. and Patricia Scanlan. “Personality, lifestyle patterns, and alcohol use among first-year college students.” Social behavior and personality: An international journal (1996): 151-156.