Our daughter visited Middlebury, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, and several other schools this summer and loved Middlebury–also loved the others. We only learned as she was contemplating applying Early Decision that Middlebury does not have regular bus service to Boston Logan. We live in the western part of the U.S., so flights into Burlington cost 2-4x more one-way, and there are no direct flights; there are daily non stop flights to Boston Logan and easy access via Greyhound and other bus lines to both Dartmouth and Bowdoin. This is a bit of a deal breaker for us and the tour guide says that student government runs buses to/from Logan during final exams. We could not see any listing of schedules and wonder if this could be a budget item for student government that gets cut some years? We don’t want her to get more invested in Middlebury and apply early if transportation it too insurmountable - especially when other LACs in the area are far more accessible. Are there any current Middlebury parents or students who can speak to whether this is a problem or whether the student government buses run regularly and are reliable? Are there any other ways (shuttles? rideshares?) of regularly getting to Boston Logan to catch flights?
There are buses that run directly from Midd to Boston, South Station, every time there is a school break. My daughter took them every time. I think the cost is $40 round trip.
It is easy to catch a bus from Midd to Burlington. From Burlington you can catch a bus to Boston.
I think some students fly in and out of upstate NY also. I’ve seen that on the Facebook parents page.
Hopefully someone with more direct flight knowledge will respond. We live on Boston so it’s not an issue for us
Check flights from Albany, NY. It can be expensive but if there is a way to get there it’s doable. MIddlebury is very remote but so are the other schools you are looking at. The jaunt of Middlebury - Burlington - Boston to west coast seems like quite the journey.
There are trains which run several times a day from Logan to Middlebury. My D & S attended Middlebury Summer Language Academies for a few years; we flew them in and out of Burlington from CA, and didn’t find it noticeably more expensive than flying to Logan. What you may save in $ flying to Logan, you will spend in other modes of transport and the time it takes from Boston to Middlebury.
Also, I know this sounds like crazy town - fly into Montreal and take the bus from there to Middlebury (4.5hrs)
http://www.middlebury.edu/sustainability/transportation/traveling
http://www.middlebury.edu/arts/boxoffice/sga-buses
TBH, the main reason S1 didn’t go to Middlebury was the relative isolation.
@momo2x2018 There is no passenger train service to Middlebury at the moment, though this may change in the next couple of years.
Vermont Translines provides bus service between Albany, NY and Burlington which stops in Middlebury (one bus a day in each direction). The ACTR runs buses between Middlebury and Burlington a few times a day. Megabus and Greyhound both have service from Boston to Burlington.
There is no direct bus from Montreal to Middlebury - you take a bus from Montreal to Burlington, and then another to Middlebury. While it may be cheaper, if there are cheap flights to Montreal from a person’s city, it will take another 5 hours or so to get from Montreal to Middlebury. It is better to fly to Logan, and take a bus from there to Burlington.
There is a direct cab from Montreal to Middlebury, and it costs $250 (maybe, their website is not active, so I’m not sure whether they are in business). There is also a direct cab from Boston for the same price.
Dowtown Middlebury is currently the scene of lots of construction (as you will have seen when you visited), based around the need to replace two 1920s bridges over the railroad (see https://vtrans.vermont.gov/projects/middlebury).
Once construction wraps up in the summer of 2021, Amtrak will/should/is supposed to begin service from NY Penn to Burlington by extending the existing daily “Ethan Allen” train from Rutland to Burlington. This will see one train each way/day, probably leaving NY early/mid-afternoon, and arriving in Midd about 9pm. The return service will leave Burlington first thing in the morning, getting to NY Penn in early afternoon.
If your daughter is applying to start at Midd in Sep 2020, she’ll have the train for two or three of her four years - it’ll be a great boon for the students and the College.
@“Contented Panther” Let’s hope that it actually happens. In 2014, it was supposed to start by 2017, on the project website, they claim that passenger train service is planned to start “by 2020”. However, 2021 or 2022 are now given for dates by which passenger rail service will start.
I personally hope that train service will start sooner rather than later, of course. It’s not simple getting to Middlebury from the Midwest via air or road.
@MWolf - agreed, but the stumbling blocks are being removed, with the Middlebury bridges project being one of the key pieces. Burlington/Midd is a going to provide a major boost to ridership on the Ethan Allen (Rutland isn’t a great draw on its own…). The other thing to look at are the plans for commuter rail Midd-Burlington when the track is rehabilitated; we may (with luck) be on the cusp of a passenger rail revolution in VT.
@“Contented Panther” As a Midd parent, and as a huge proponent of trains, I truly hope that this is true. In general, it is past time that we bring back train travel in this country.
@MWolf - here’s the latest - early 2021: https://www.wcax.com/content/news/Burlington-Amtrak-passenger-train-extension-to-be-completed-by-2021-561215801.html?fbclid=IwAR28PD9OWCXEAxFVlUURWuTvH7ROGdNG6kLu4kIGxOaZWtPRDx-pFDbjVdg
@“Contented Panther” Thanks for the info!
I would think hard about what the travel will really look like. Your D will need flights that work with the other part of her trip and there may end up being only one or two flights she can even make if she has to take a long bus or train ride to the airport in the morning. Does she want to be doing this every time she comes home? Will that mean coming home for shorter breaks like Thanksgiving no longer make any sense if she’s traveling two full days to get back and forth. What about the travel back? Is there a flight that gets her to Boston in time to get transportation out to Midd?
Our S is at Bowdoin and we’ve so far been flying him in and out of Portland with a layover in Baltimore to get home. We’re doing that because we’d really like to keep him on Southwest. Two free bags and we can make flights way ahead of time at a good price and change the flights with no change fee if we need to do that. He flew into Boston once to get to Bowdoin for admitted students day. It was ok, I guess. We didn’t know about the bus (and I would check on that as I don’t know how often that runs). He flew into Logan, took an Uber to the train station, and then the train right to Bowdoin’s campus which was a three hour train ride. It was do-able but he left Chicago at 8:00am and didn’t get into Bowdoin until early evening.
He is our oldest and we let him look at schools without a look at travel but travel is definitely something that needs to be considered. You need to look at the realities of travel especially in the NE when weather could really throw a curve ball. I’m already worried that, if there’s bad weather for Thanksgiving, he could very well be on a plane to Baltimore and then get stuck there and not be able to get home. He’s not old enough to get a hotel so not sure what would happen. A LOT of kids travel far for college but get all of the info you can so that you can make an educated decision. And I wouldn’t be making a decision on some trains that may or may not be ready by the time she goes to college.