<p>Thanks, everyone! I definitely feel less weird about it. Because I hadn’t seen the other college either, and won’t, I didn’t want my feelings about the one to affect his decision about both.</p>
<p>Funny story: Dh and I were discussing this, and he said he was shocked that I wanted to drive him up for move-in day because it’s a long haul – more than 1,000 miles. I told him I did have my limits and want to at least see where he’ll spend the next four years of his life.</p>
<p>YDS, we do drive S1 out to Chicago every fall and pick him up again, ~700 mi. each way. We like that part of the ritual. 
As I mentioned previously, I hadn’t been on campus until move-in day. S loved being able to confidently show me the way around his new home.</p>
<p>He absolutely has to see the place …you don’t.</p>
<p>It’s a $100 price tag for each year of the next four years…it’s a sunk cost and essential.</p>
<p>I didn’t go on college visits or admitted student days with my kids. I honestly don’t know what my presence would have added. I actually think it was better that my son traveled alone to his college, because transportation to & from the airport was somewhat complicated and so part of his visit experience was also the navigation/transit experience. All went well – but it was a very different experience in the fall when I flew out with him, rented a car at the airport, and drove to campus – of course that was the first and last time he every had the benefit of mommy-rent-a-car. </p>
<p>The important things for parents to know are financials or other issues that can generally be answered through checking the college web site or sending an email if appropriate.</p>
<p>No…I wished I could have visited the campus for the second kid…but I saved the money for other predicted expenses. </p>
<p>For one of the kids we visited two universities that were less than two hours from home (it is a great experience to see the campus), for the other kid it was too much money to pay for flight, taxi, hotel & food…so the first visit was during moving day…and then made an appointment for a tour group of the university held during moving day for “prospect students”; That really helped us.</p>
<p>The Internet, brochures, the university website and e-mails to the admission office provided all the information we needed. With one of the kids, we saved the money for the semester tuition and flights back home during Christmas.</p>
<p>I went on many college trips with S1 and S2. Ironically S1 picked the one college that neither my husband nor I had seen. He knew a couple kids there and we had sent him to visit for a weekend on his own. It was a strange feeling knowing that I would see it for the first time when we dropped him off that August but in retrospect everything worked out just fine. Intellectually I knew that it was his choice and where he was going to live but it is one of those ah ha moments.</p>
<p>Calmom, Definitely agree about the kid making at least one solo trip out to the school if at all possible. For some kids, the logistics of travel and the reality of just how far (or not) they are from home hits when they are doing it all solo.</p>
<p>S1 did solo trips to his final choices (including cross-country) and so will S2.</p>
<p>I can imagine this non-visiting is a regular occurrence for international students and their families.</p>
<p>Ds already has done a solo trip to one of the schools but not this one. It is another reason why I don’t want to go – so he can learn to navigate this alone. On the other solo trip, his plane was delayed and he was going to miss a connection and I had to walk him through it by phone. I was sooo stressed. But it was good for both of us. :)</p>
<p>Use Google street view and Bing maps to do a virtual tour of the campus. Seeing the buildings and landscape will familiarize you with the setting so you can understand what your son is talking about. Save the trip money for a visit while he is actually attending.</p>
<p>We didn’t visit every school my S applied to. We saw the close ones by car and waited until an acceptance came for some of the others. Once our S narrowed down his choice to 2 schools, then we visited them with him.</p>