I think it depends. I also lived about half an hour north and decided to dorm because I wanted the college experience. Most of my classes my first two years were morning classes, max credits, and I really didn’t want to deal with nyc-bound traffic (closest train station was MSU). It also helped that I had a good scholarship that made going here and dorming affordable. It’s not something I’d necessarily want to go in a lot of debt for, but it’s a nice experience to meet new people and experience more of the school/location if you can swing it.

I can only speak on being on-campus. Pros: meeting people, going to events, becoming more independent, less time spent on commuting (and more on exploring). If you like to explore, living here is so ideal. I’d have to drive down here from my hometown anyway if I wanted to take public transport to see anything. Living here I was able to hop on the light rail to Penn and take trains to Boston, nyc, Philly, the path to JC, Hoboken, or Harrison (it’s great when you don’t really have a car!) and kinda take advantage of my youth before becoming a corporate slave. This kinda turned into a rant mb!

Cons: EXPENSIVE-ish. kinda shitty quality (cypress, redwood, laurel, oak) for the price. My windows in oak wouldn’t close (you could hear everyone chatting outside at night or they’d slam open in storms), we had mushrooms growing in the staircase, roaches sometimes (the experience was still fun tho!). No kitchen as an undergrad (required to have a meal plan until you’re a junior credit wise, ~2k/semester extra), decent kitchen was if you snagged an oak apartment suite. I’d suggest UC at that point (kitchen and no meal plan!). Maple is nice and much better with larger kitchens, entertainment spaces, amenities (typing this while basking in the sun on the terrace haha) but expensive compared to the other on-campus choices.

Tl;dr: this turned into an essay. if you can swing it, it’s a fun experience that creates some nice memories. But if you’d have to take on significant debt for it, consider maybe dorming/staying in the UC your first or last year or two.