DS flew home over Christmas, and with transportation to and from the airport, it was a long affair. TBH, I have felt worse about the shorter breaks that happen here and there (i.e. long weekends). I get the feeling that a lot of kids leave campus and that it’s sort of quiet on campus. But maybe the down time is welcome?
In any case, I also suspect that if this isn’t to his liking, he’ll develop plans in coming years. Perhaps hardest freshman year.
We’re going through discussions about this right now, as my D’s top 3 choices aren’t that close to home. I went across the country for school, so I only came home for winter and summer breaks. I spent Spring Break with other students, and was lucky enough to have a relative not too far away who I could spend Thanksgiving with. There was always a professor who had an open invitation for Thanksgiving dinner for students who couldn’t go home, and I have heard of similar things at other colleges. Friends with parents who lived close would often invite others as well. I don’t know anyone who ever was alone for Thanksgiving.
We’re carefully factoring in transportation costs into the equation for D. The irony of our situation is that the school that is farthest away is actually the cheapest to travel to. It’s only 20 min from an airport with a discount airline that flies between there and our home town. Tickets to visit campus were only $84 round trip and she can take public transportation between the airport and campus. There’s one school that’s 550 miles from home, and we couldn’t get tickets + shuttle to campus for under $650 round trip, not to mention there’s only 3 potential return flights/day that all have hours long layovers.
My D18 is planning to go to college in Canada. No matter which university she goes to, it will be a long way from Oklahoma. She knows she won’t be able to come home for American Thanksgiving. We have already planned to set up a laptop at her place at the Thanksgiving table so she can be present via Skype. We’ve done that sort of thing before when separated on special holidays and it works well for us. Technology ain’t all that bad.
Some colleges (particularly those that draw their students from all over the country) keep their dorms open for all the breaks except the long winter break. Others (particularly those that draw their students mostly from nearby areas) close most or all of their dorms during all the breaks.
I had one kid at each type of college.
If your student is going to go far enough away so that coming home for all of the breaks is impractical, it’s better to be at the type of college that leaves its dorms open for short breaks. At least that way, the student has somewhere to stay (although the dining halls may close, and the student may need to buy food in the surrounding community – which may be expensive if it means relying on restaurants for every meal).
Wow! I can’t thank all of you enough for sharing your experiences. I never expected such a response and I really appreciate it. You have given me so much to think about.
Now I’m curious to see if I can find any cheap direct flights. From what I can see so far, it’s not too bad to get to Dallas or Charlotte. Minneapolis is a bit more. North and South Dakota are pricey.
There’s a smaller airport not too far away that might offer some bargains.
For the new parents on the page, look up Dorm Room Movers. We used them after both Freshman and Sophomore year. You pay by the piece and they take almost anything - boxes (which they provide), refrigerators, couches, futons, lamps, rugs, etc. Price list is online. You register with them, choose a pick up date (if you pick one that is already scheduled for Yale, pickup is free) and a time. When they get there, they inventory it, process the bill (which is billed to the credit card on file) and they whisk it away for the summer. On the back end, they deliver it back to the new room in the fall at a pre-selected time. They know the schools they deal with well and they know the dorms, entryways, etc. For my D, who had a ton of boxes and plastic bins and a refrigerator, it was about $500. A couple of times her roommates sent boxes with hers and just paid me for them. May seem steep, but after that initial rush of upperclassmen taking your stuff in freshman year, there is usually no one around to help with move out since kids scatter as finals are over and there is definitely no one to move you back in sophomore year. The piece of mind of having it go and come back with no effort, was worth it for me. No way we could have rented a truck and paid for summer storage for that amount.
Mine did not come home for the short breaks (Thanksgiving) or long weekends. With 3 airports and literally and entire day of traveling to get from college to home and then from home to college and the ensuing time changes it made no sense. Obviously if there is a direct flight from the college town to the home town your mileage will vary. The kids didn’t mind. They don’t “love” airline travel (who does) and they had plenty of friends and acquaintances in the same boat (not returning to faraway places for short holidays) that the holidays became a fun-time to do special things with those friends.
I just made spring break arrangements for my daughter about an hour ago - for me to go visit her! She plays a sport so must stay in town for spring break. I’ll get to see 4 games (and 2 of her boyfriend’s), go to the beach, wear shorts, get a vacation instead of just paying for hers. She’s in Florida and they only get a few days for Thanksgiving, so a lot of the kids stay put and the families travel. Why not?
She’s in a smaller town but it does have an airport. If she flies in an out of town, it requires a plane change in Atlanta (and costs a little more) so she prefers to fly out of Orlando (about an hour away). She has always found a ride, but there is a van service if necessary.
Her sister goes to school about 150 miles away. That’s a pain because it is 2+ hours up and 2+ hours back (of me driving!). I’d much rather just go to the airport to pick a child up.
I think transportation should be considered, but people have been figuring out for a long time how to get to Grinnell Iowa and Burlington VT and Clemson SC. I always think of the movie “A River Runs Though It.” The brother got on a train to Dartmouth and rarely went home during his college years, because it was 3000 miles away.
@twoinanddone I just found out the cheapest flights around seem to be to Florida from our small regional airport.
Unfortunately, no Florida schools have been on our radar. But that would be a great opportunity for a family visit!
We did the long distance thing for four years of boarding school and now the first year of college. Remote on both ends of the trip. The $35 college airport shuttle is a big improvement over the $250 private limo I often had to hire for BS (both fares quoted are one way). After spending probably thousands on shuttles in high school, I definitely researched what each college offered for airport transportation and scratched a few off the list if transport looked bad and the school didn’t offer anything she couldn’t find elsewhere.
My D has gotten stuck overnight twice, once in MSP and once at Dulles. She was under 18 both times but it worked out OK. (Me: don’t open your hotel room door no matter what they say!!). One time she went to unpack her suitcase at the hotel and was dismayed to find out it wasn’t hers! Back to the airport to make the switch and thankfully her suitcase was there waiting for her.
She missed a day of classes each time but now that she’s at college, they have multiple travel days so I can build “getting stuck” time into her itinerary.
She’s my last, and I bring her home for all major breaks. Soon enough she will be off on her own and I want to savor our remaining time together. Her college has many international students so the campus is not dead on the occasional shorter breaks.
I’m from a smallish town in California and went to college in very rural New England, both locations 3+ hours from a major city. I didn’t have much money.
I spent Thanksgivings and spring breaks either on campus or visiting friends who lived back East, and I went home only for winter and summer breaks.
Worked out fine.
@twoinanddone We have similar Spring Break plans! My S plays a sport and will be in Florida so the hubby is flying there (we both went last year which was his first). We fly him home across the country to CA for Thanksgiving and Winter Break. I look at airfare many months in advance and can usually find $500 or so roundtrip fare. The logistics are easy and thankfully, weather has not been an issue.
Very simple: the kids didn’t come home for short breaks. My daughter generally didn’t come home for spring break either… I remember year #1 my daughter stayed in her dorm and worked to earn money for living expenses for her summer intership; year #2; I think my d. went to visit friends in Europe; year #3 she was studying abroad; and year #4 I really don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t come home.
You need to check with each school as to what their policies are for room & board over the breaks – some colleges close the dorms, and most stop food service. My daughter was in NYC so food service wasn’t a problem - plenty of options to eat nearby.
I do agree that the logistics just to get to/from campus for the longer breaks are more complex for a rural than urban school… and I can’t offer help on that one. My son did attend a remote college as an undergrad, transfer-- but he was older than and had a car – it was about a 5 hour drive.
We moved during each of our kids’ college years. DD1 - we lived nearby for her first two years and she brought a friend home with her for Thanksgiving and Easter. Year 3, we were cross country and she only came home for winter and spring breaks. DD2 - we lived nearby for three years so it was easy to carpool. Year 4, we moved 600 miles away and she took a car with her. DD3 was a freshman at the same school, so they came home together for Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks. DD3 came home via plane for fall and spring breaks during her year 3 and I picked her up for Christmas. We moved again during her year 4 and she had the car, so drove home for Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks. They always had storage units over the summer, even when close.
I went to Mount Holyoke from California. My parents could only afford to bring me home at Christmas, so I found people to stay with for the other breaks. I enjoyed this, and appreciated my time at home more.
My son is at Oberlin, and we have recently moved from Mass to mid-coast Maine. He has to fly from Cleveland with at least one stop to Portland, which is a 90 minute drive from our house. The fares vary, but we spend about 400 per round trip. When we lived in Mass, he flew directly to Boston and we could get flights as low as $250 if we planned well. Oberlin has long breaks (a full week in October, as many as 6 weeks in winter, and another week long break in March.) Only Thanksgiving is short.
In Mass, we also hosted our daughter’s Wellesley friends, as many as 6 at a time for the shorter breaks. I wish my son would find a similar arrangement in Ohio, but he’s just not very social and really likes to come home during the breaks. If you have a kid like this, definitely budget for it or pick a school that’s closer to home!
We’re on the west coast and our son attends college in a small New England town, about 3 hours away from a major airport. We are lucky in that his school is on the quarter system and there are no “short” breaks. In fact his winter break begins at Thanksgiving and ends at New Year’s! But if it hadn’t been so and the Thanksgiving break had been just a long weekend, we would not have had him fly home. Instead we would have had him take a bus down to visit his east coast relatives for that particular holiday. If you’re looking at schools now, check our their calendars and see where the holidays fall.
@twoinanddone It appears my Ds future team does a Carolina’s trip during spring break – from South Jersey it is pretty drivable so I am thinking at least one of the years I will go there and hopefully get to see her play and maybe have dinner with her and other girls or something. 
DD entered her LAC knowing she couldn’t come home for T’giving. Thus, she started to set up options almost as soon as school began. Good thing, too, as she started to feel that Option #1 was getting a little creepy after a month or two so she ended up at Option #2 or #3. That option worked for a couple of years until that student’s family situation blew up, so now she spends Thanksgiving with a different friend’s family.
DD graduated last May and is working not that far from her LAC. It still means that we don’t see her much. I must say, she calls me at least three days a week while on her commute home and often calls her dad for cooking advice on Sunday nights. This is way more than we heard from her freshman year and probably more than we would if she lived nearby.
I live in Wisconsin. D1 went to college in southern California. She came home for Thanksgiving freshman year and was jet lagged the entire time. Sophomore year, she went with a classmate to the classmate’s home in Hawaii. She was kind of bored and almost flipped out when the standby seat (classmate’s mom is a flight attendant) seemed in danger of disappearing. Junior year, she was studying abroad, in Ghana. I can’t remember what she did senior year. Her school had an early spring break (in February) and she never came home then. It would have been nice to see her more but she loved her college and I’m glad that is where she went.
We’re playing them in S. Carolina in 3 weeks. That’s our only trip this year. We have a lot of teams from the northeast come down to Florida, and some have a pretty big crowd show up at our games. Most teams that come down play 2-3 games on a long weekend, and there are 7, soon to be 9, teams near Orlando to schedule. Beats playing in the snow in PA or NY.