Also, I don’t attend college and I do live at home, and as I also said in my reply to Caleb I have already considered and will be trying to implement more frugal spending habits to save up for the down payment I know I need.

There is a reason you see all these syndicators with their own podcasts, blogs, hosting and attending meetings.  

The Trustee of the REIT can buy and sell properties within the REIT without triggering a capital gain event to you as the investor, however, this flexibility also allows the operators to potentially add properties to your investment portfolio that may expose you to risks or asset classes you were previously unaware of.There are a couple of sponsors I am aware of that carve individual properties out of the REIT, into a DST, then pull them back into the REIT at a significant mark-up to the DST investor.

I always recommend attending local meetups when you're first getting started.

You might consult with him or attend his class.

Typically those are shorter stays as they are doing something for a couple months vs staying for the entire semester or year.

@Eugene Lubman, There's a couple different considerations here. 

Here is a copy paste from a post of mine a couple years ago.http://forums.biggerpockets.com/viewtopic.php?

We're in the process of evaluating a multifamily near where one of my sons attend college. 

They visited Waco on the Magnolia tour idea and saw the houses, saw the prices and wished they could have moved there and just commuted maybe 1 or 2x a month for the office meeting.   90min drive every day would have been killer, but a couple of times a month they thought wasn't bad.