We are planning to visit colleges in Oct from Tucson. We would like to visit Georgia Tech, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Melon. Any suggestions on what will be the best approach. We might need to fly to any of the cities and then drive or take flights for all cities?
This will depend upon how much time you have, and how far apart the schools are. I see Georgia Tech to Duke as 7 hours. Johns Hopkins is another 5 hours. Carnegie Mellon is another 4+ hours. This is quite a trip. You are going to get tired of airports if you do the entire thing by plane. On the other hand, you would spend a lot of time in the car if you start at GT and drive the whole way. Visiting campuses is not exactly relaxing either. I think that you would not enjoy yourself much if you tried to do one school each day for four consecutive days.
Have you been accepted to all of these? This is a lot of travel if you are not sure that you will be admitted or are not sure whether you can afford the schools.
We have flown to a central location, rented a car, and visited multiple schools that weren’t too far from where we had flown to. However, they were closer together than the four schools that you want to look at.
Our approach has been similar to above: fly to somewhere where there’s a high concentration of schools of interest and visit those. Outliers (far away/not in an area of other schools of interest) we are not visiting campus but trying to get informed other ways (social media, emailing regional AdRep, etc.) If my student is admitted and seriously considering one of these, we would visit at that time. There’s just too much ground to cover, especially considering the very low chances of admission at some schools!
I’ll add that I did find it useful early in the process to visit a variety of different types of schools in person (LAC, public, private, urban, rural) so DD could narrow her focus a bit and save us time on subsequent trips.
Thank you all for your suggestion. We are just looking at schools in our list. I think it make sense to go to a one place and then drive.
If you have time, you could break it up with a weekend in between. So Tucson to ATL on Wednesday. Visit GT on Thursday morning and drive to Duke Thursday late afternoon. Then Duke Friday. The weekend to rest up and leisurely drive to Hopkins . JHU on Monday and drive to Pittsburgh Monday late afternoon. Fly out of Pittsburgh Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Still a lot of driving, but at least spread out. Traffic in the east coast will slow you down even if the distance is not much, relative to the West.
Check all the colleges for their general info sessions and any specific ones and when they’re available. Sign up early. We found out that Thursdays and Fridays fill up fast.
How much time do you have?
Are you able to do two trips? One to see Georgia Tech and Duke. And then go to Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon another time?
Or fly into Atlanta, visit Georgia Tech, drive to North Carolina and visit Duke, drive up to visit Johns Hopkins and then fly home from Baltimore. Then either don’t visit Carnegie Mellon or go separately another time…
Or drive between all four of the schools? Fly into Atlanta and out of Pittsburgh. That does mean a lot of driving…
If you’re going all that way, especially if you take a relatively leisurely approach time-wise to do it all, you might want to see if there is, and add, a match or two in the cities you’re visiting as well. I know you said you just wanted to see the schools on your list, but those are all reaches, and maybe having sight of some other options (unless all your matches and safeties are instate?) might be prudent.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2095831-college-visits-help.html#latest
According to this thread, your son is now a HS senior in Arizona. I guess we are all assuming you have some sure things for acceptance in Arizona.
Did you take the first trip to Boston? Did you drive or fly between the two metro areas? How did that trip go?
I agree with others…CMU is the outlier geographically here. Really, it’s a long drive from Hopkins to Pittsburgh. I would suggest flying to Atlanta…see GA Tech, and drive to Duke. More than a couple of hours, but doable. You could then drive to Baltimore to see Hopkins, but it’s a LONG drive. I would suggest flying to Baltimore. Visit Hopkins…then either fly home from there…or fly to Pittsburgh to see CMU returning to AZ from Pittsburgh.
Really though…I think I would choose Hopkins or CMU and fly to ONE of those destinations from Raleigh. Then fly home. See the other school another time.
Actually, CMU to John Hopkins is the closest of any pairing of schools. GA Tech is actually the outlier, as it to Duke is the furthest/longest drive. CMU to JHU is about 250 miles/4 hours, JHU to Duke is a little over 300 miles and 5 hours, and Duke to GA Tech is close to 400 miles and pushing 6 hours.
If CMU is #4 on the list then yeah, it’s the outlier. Otherwise, it’s GA Tech…
I would spend more time looking for match/safety schools…visit a couple of the ones you mention…maybe a city school and a suburb school…apply to all the above and then see which ones you get into AND THEN VISIT.