Planning a college trip around a campus visit day at Smith in the Fall. Flying in from WC and arriving late to Logan. First question is a hotel that is reasonable and close to airport. We plan to visit Wellesley, Smith, Mt Holyoke, Wesleyan, Brandeis (maybe) and Yale. Any New Englanders with ideas on route? We are arriving on a Thursday and flying back Wednesday (flight is at 6 PM). I’m thinking Friday at Mt Holyoke, Saturday at Smith, Monday at Wesleyan, Tuesday/Wed Wellesley and Brandeis. Seem reasonable? Trying to fit Yale in there somewhere. Any recommendations for itinerary changes, hotels, etc? Anyone run this course before? Thanks!
It’s just over half an hour between Wesleyan and Yale, so if you were to stay near Middletown CT on the Sunday night, you could do Wesleyan in the morning, Yale in the afternoon, and hop on 95 north back to the Boston area for Tuesday.
If you’re committed to full days at each school, that won’t work. But one possibility might be to tour on your own at someplace on the Sunday - while the Amherst/Northampton area is lovely, you’ll probably have a pretty good sense of it after two days there.
If it were me, I would drive closer to your first college and find a hotel there upon arrival on Thursday. There are plenty in Waltham/Newton/Framingham near Wellesley and Brandeis. You have no idea how bad traffic can be heading into Boston from Logan on a workday morning. Don’t do it! You must go through Boston to get to any of the schools on your list. Also, looks like you have Sunday off. If you have not been to Boston before, you may want to do Brandeis and Wellesley on Friday and Sat. Do the tourist thing Sunday in Boston, you can take public transportation in from Newton or Framingham (both near those schools), and the other 3 schools.
You could probably see Wellesley and Brandeis on the same day, they’re only about 20 min apart… Also might I suggest staying a little further out, especially since it doesn’t seem that you’re going to visit schools within the city itself? Hotels on the western side of Cambridge/Watertown/Newton/etc. are close enough to have public transit into the city if you want to go out to dinner or see some of the sights, but it’ll be easier to get on the westbound Mass Pike and get to the schools you want to see without hitting commuter traffic than it would be staying in downtown Boston itself.
Distances in that part of New England are not very significant. The longest drive you could possibly have with that array of colleges would be Yale to Wellesley or Brandeis, and it would not take you two hours to do that unless you ran into some sort of road blockage. It takes me longer to drive to work in the morning than it took me the last time I drove from Wesleyan to Yale in the middle of a day (i.e., not rush hour, and by the way not as long as 30 minutes, either). The Holyoke/Smith and Wellesley/Brandeis pairs are even closer together (and none is really so far from Logan that it makes sense to stay at the airport one night, unless you plan to arrive very late at night).
You are right to pay more attention to these colleges than to Yale, but it takes more time to see Yale than it does any of them – Yale is very sprawly, in a way none of the others is.
Other similar possibilities to look at if you are willing to double-up or to do short drive-bys: Boston College, Tufts, Connecticut College, Hampshire, Brown, Harvard.
Thanks. We have to be in Northampton on Saturday for an early morning start. Our flight gets in late Thursday night. and I don’t drive well in the dark. We were hoping to do Mount Holyoke on Friday. I think we avoid Boston traffic by heading to CT from Northampton if I remember correctly. It’s been a while but I’m originally from the East Coast. A free day in Boston would be great if we could swing it as my D has not been there before. Not sure how to fit it in.
There is very little driving actually between all these schools, which is good. If it were me, I’d try to consolidate some visits to give you some free time for exploring and being a tourist.
I’d suggest:
Thursday: Stay near airport since you don’t like night driving.
Friday: AM drive to Mt. Holyoke, early afternoon tour and info session
Saturday: Smith College (might as well squeeze in a campus visit to Amherst college while the area and maybe to UMASS to check out consortium colleges)
Sunday: day off, relax, sleep in, drive to Middletown CT area.
Monday: AM Wesleyan - earliest slot available, PM Yale - later afternoon slot - drive to Boston before it is dark
Tuesday: Boston tourist stuff
Wednesday: Wellesley and Brandeis
We had no problem doing two visits in a day for colleges in close geographic proximity. Especially doable if you have a down day or two scheduled in there.
I like the itinerary in post 6…except I would do a morning tour of Wellesley on Tuesday…and a morning tour of Brandeis on Wednesday…and do touristy stuff both afternoons.
I see you have your tickets already, but if you wanted to avoid Logan airport, you could fly in/out of Hartford, CT. Southwest flies to Hartford, though I’m not sure if they have non-stops from the west coast. Early in the trip visit My Holyoke and Smith, then in the middle, see Wellesley and Brandeis and at the end see Wesleyan and Yale. But I honestly don’t think getting in and out of Logan is that bad. (Brandeis and Wellesley are in the suburbs, one more a middle class area and the other pretty high income.)
To confirm what the OP said, you certainly don’t go through Boston if you are traveling between Northampton MA and Middletown or New Haven CT. Interstate 91 essentially follows the Connecticut River from Northern Vermont to right around Middletown, passing through Northampton and Hartford (among many other places), then it veers southwest right to New Haven. None of Smith, Wesleyan, or Yale is as much as 10 minutes from I-91 (there’s an I-91 exit right on the Yale campus); Mt. Holyoke is a little farther drive from the superhighway only because it’s on the other side of the river.
Thanks all. can anyone recommend a place to stay (hotel or area) that is a short drive from airport late night but outside of major traffic routes in am? I noticed Logan is on East side of city. If I could drive 15 minutes west that might be helpful getting out of town in am. I’m okay driving as long as the streets/highways are well lit. Usually urban areas are fine.
The Boston Hilton (Logan) is probably the closest hotel; it has a shuttle service from the airport terminals. It’s a nice hotel. I’ve stayed there when I’ve had early flights and didn’t want to drive into the city at 4 am. You’ll be going west when you leave in the morning and if you are on the road before 8 am, you shouldn’t have a problem with traffic since most of it will be going into the city.
I would leave earlier than 8 if you’re headed west, more like 7:15… I live slightly west of the city and went to Wellesley so have driven along your approximate route many times; there are a bunch of firms (big engineering, insurance, law firms, etc.) out along I-90, so there will be more westbound commuter traffic than you might expect. I’ve found that the traffic starts to get really bad at 7:30 or so, but as long as you’re past Newton/Wellesley by that point I think you’ll be fine.
Great group of schools. Northampton is a fun New England town. Take some time to do some relaxing things and allow some down time. Six schools located relatively close together is a very doable itinerary but you will feel some info overload.
If you do go into Boston, driving and parking are a challenge. You might want to do something like hang out at Boston Common and not try to hit several spots in an afternoon. Faneuil Hall area is nice too. Look Park is just a few miles outside downtown Northampton. It’s nothing overwhelming but is a very nice public park if the weather is good.
One tip: one of you, preferably your daughter, might want to write up a paragraph or two on your impressions of each school. It can be challenging later to recall the little things that leave a positive or negative impression. We found it helpful to include the funny, whimsical things. Those are the things that brought memories back more vividly later.
We also liked to grab breakfast, lunch, or dinner in the neighborhood where students most often hang out. That’s helpful to see as well. Smith is right by downtown Northampton, and there are nice places to eat there. We ate at the town square near Brandeis. One of mine did a summer camp at MH but don’t remember if we ate around campus. Have fun!
Not to throw a wrench into anything, but you may want to check out Connecticut College while you’re there too. It’s a little further East of Yale, but it may be too far from where you need to be. It’s probably just under Wesleyan and Amherst as far as ranking goes - more like Brandeis.