a gym in my opinion is always better, unless you have alot of things in your house. for a few years i worked out in my house i had a treadmill, ski machine, bench with leg extension and a bowflex. even with all of that stuff it still was hard to workout, because its hard to be switching things around and after a while it gets annoying to be taking plates off of a dumbell bar and switching then while in a gym i just drop the dumbells and then pick up a different set. i would advise joining a gym if you dont already have an kickass homegym, or a huge budget to spend on your equipment. but i also understand that some people definatly dont feel comfortable working out in a gym, sometimes i dont especially when im benching 225 and the guy next to me is doing the same amount of weight but doing it like its nothing. If your school has a gym that you can use it would save you tons of money and chances are your school will be local and you wont have very far to travel, most of the time during the summer schools will have training sessions for athletes on school sports to workout and get ready for the season and there is usually a coach there that can watch you and make sure your not doing anything wrong. If that doesnt work then i would definatly incourage you to join a gym