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What does “going to college” actually look like around the world? If you’re American, you might picture move-in day: parents unloading the car, boxes everywhere, a mini fridge, and an 18-year-old moving into a dorm. But that’s only one version of student life. Take Germany. Shared apartments, known as WGs, are popular with students and young people. And getting a room can involve something called a “WG-Casting.” You contact the people already living there, tell them about yourself, and if they’re interested, they may invite you over to meet the roommates. In a competitive housing market, they might be meeting several potential roommates before deciding who gets the room. It’s basically a roommate interview. Then go south in Europe and student life can look completely different. Living with your parents while attending university is much more common in countries like Spain and Italy than it is in Northern Europe. And that difference continues beyond college. According to the latest Eurostat data, young people in both Spain and Italy leave their parental home at an average age of about 30.2. In Finland, it’s around 21.4. In Denmark, about 21.8. That’s almost a decade of difference in when leaving home becomes typical. Nordic student populations can look different in other ways too. Students are more likely to live independently or with partners, and higher education isn’t always imagined as one continuous four-year period immediately after high school. Then there’s South Korea, where one particularly interesting form of housing is the goshiwon. Goshiwon are extremely small private rooms that originally developed as places for people preparing for demanding state examinations. Traditionally, the setup was intentionally basic: a small room, usually a bed and desk, with shared facilities. Today, goshiwon have evolved into a broader form of low-cost urban housing and aren’t simply “student housing,” but their history says a lot about the relationship between housing and South Korea’s intense exam culture. And then there’s the United States. Movies have given us a very specific image of the American college experience: move away at 18, live in a dorm, find a roommate, and begin a completely independent life. That experience absolutely exists. But American higher education also includes community-college students, commuters, students living with family, older students, and students living independently off campus. The traditional residential four-year-college experience is only one part of a much bigger picture. And that’s what I find so interesting about student housing. Where you live while studying isn’t just a personal decision. It can reflect housing costs, government support, family expectations, the structure of higher education, and cultural ideas about when adulthood and independence are supposed to begin. So I’m curious: where are you from, and where do university students typically live there? #StudentLife #StudyAbroad #university #global #dorm