<p>We are flying in from Far East Asia to visit Santa Clara (son has admissions) then flying to Wash U and driving to Vandy and GT. From there flying to Houston and visiting Rice and UT Austin and flying to LA, visiting USC and then back.</p>
<p>Son has 9 days off from school Mar 18 onwards but flying and time diff will take 2 days away.</p>
<p>We need suggestions of hotels near the colleges and also whether we should do tours or not.</p>
<p>pixeljig, I am not familiar with the areas you will be visiting, so I can’t help much there, but since you are the founder of the famous “Colleges Crossed Off The List After Visiting” thread, I hope you will report back after your trip!</p>
<p>If these will be your S’s only visits to these campuses before decision making, I would absolutely recommend taking the official tours so you don’t waste time and miss anything. You can then wander around the campus and area on your own before heading to your next destination. Admissions should also be able to help you set up appointments with professors and arrange for your S to sit in on classes if he wants. Have a great trip.</p>
<p>Agree, I would contact admissions and explain that you are bringing your son over and work with them to schedule a tour that will fit your particular schedule. When you are making a long trip the colleges in general are very open to working with the parents. In most cases the colleges/unis can be very accomodating if their “fixed time” tours don’t jibe with your schedule and will gladly arrange a personal tour situation (or at least that was our experience on a particularly packed trip NE I did with my S2). My kids prefer a guided tour to walking on a campus on their own but YMMV and mine preferred to have time to visit the bookstore, eat one meal, maybe sit in on a class of it sounded interesting and sit somewhere for awhile (an hour or so was usually enough) just scoping out the kids or chatting with someone. If I were you, I would lay out my plane schedules and driving schedules first then look at the available time at each campus area, then check the websites to see if the “standard” tour/info session works or not, then call admissions for each school. We’ve had great luck with colleges having recommended hotels or college discount hotels convenient to the campus/town. Hotels are tricky to recommend as some people just want a clean sleep cheap, others want amenities, etc. We’ve found the mapquest driving times to be fairly accurate and on the conservative side during non-rush hours for planning purposes. If you have toll roads to travel a rental car with an easy pass makes the trips much more pleasant than continually fishing around for money. Mapquest will indicate which roads are toll if any on your driving portions of the trip.</p>
<p>I would say take the tours if you can fit them into your schedule. Most (if not all) of the schools I’ve visited had scheduled information sessions and separate (but usually sequential) tours. If there’s only time for one, I’d take the tour because the info tends to be very similar from school to school and you can ask any questions that are important to you on the tour. </p>
<p>Maybe you’ve already thoroughly researched, but if not I think you might want to consider flying between St. Louis and Nashville and possibly Atlanta (GT=Georgia Tech?). You can fly between St. Louis and Nashville right now on SWA for about $100 per person (about the same price from San Jose–not sure if that’s the closest airport for Santa Clara). SWA doesn’t fly to Atlanta, but I’d check into flights for that as well. One way car rentals are usually pretty expensive to the point that it might not save you enough money to warrant losing the driving time.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! That sure does help. Yes, these are the colleges son has applied to, so we are really looking forward to finally being able to see them. Younger son is accompanying on the trip and its going to be exciting indeed.</p>
<p>Will make a note about the cheap flights and such. Also about the point that we should plan the trip and then start calling the colleges. Good Idea! As of now its almost fully jam packed with visits and travel.</p>
<p>Let’s see if I’ve got this itinerary straight:</p>
<p>– you fly from somewhere in the Far East to California and visit Santa Clara Univ.
– fly from San Francisco to St. Louis and visit Washington Univ.
– then rent a car and drive from St. Louis to Nashville – approx. 330 miles – and visit Vanderbilt
– then drive approx. 500 miles and visit Georgia Tech
– then fly to Houston and visit Rice Univ.
– then travel about 160 miles and visit UT-Austin
– then fly to LA and visit USC
– then fly home</p>
<p>I’m with Bruce. I’d let him miss a couple more days of school and build some breathing room in there. Also, if you’ve got a better vibe about a couple of the schools, I’d plan extra time there. I fear that after that march nothing will look good because y’all will be exhausted!</p>
<p>There’s a hotel on campus at the Knight Center 1-866-933-9400. This might not work for you, though, because each room has only one queen bed. Special rates for Wash U visitors. Includes breakfast. Alternatively, we stay at the Hampton Inn in Forest Park, which also has Wash U rates. 314-655-3993.</p>
<p>I agree with others who suggested you’re doing too much in too little time!</p>
<p>This really is a huge amount of traveling, and he will probably not really love all of the places he will see. Is it possible for him to apply to places he thinks he will like (based on programs, location, web sites, etc.)? Then, maybe he can visit after getting accepted. I realize the timing is off for that kind of thing, but perhaps time off from school can be arranged, and maybe he would only have to see a couple of schools at that point. That being said, at least you should bring along a camera so that you can document each place you see. Since you will be seeing so many places in so short a time, things can get all mixed up in one’s mind. If you document each place carefully, you will be able to remember what you have seen.</p>
<p>The Wash U hotel might work if the student could have an overnight with a student. </p>
<p>Personally I’d do more flying with this itinerary. It’s a 380 mile drive for us to Pittsburgh. It takes us all day to get there, but it’s only an hour and a half on a plane. </p>
<p>It’s too bad you can’t do this trip when you know where your kid has been accepted, then you might be able to drop some of the visits.</p>
<p>I agree with previous advice. Tours are useful, info sessions slightly less though. I’d do both whenever possible, but if only one is, make it the tour.</p>
<p>I agree that if you can add 2 days it will help. I, however, think the trip might be doable and if you research Southwest and some of the low cost carriers you might be able to trim the longest driving time leg. The regions you are hitting might have worthwhile impact on your son. Texas, Georgia, California etc. I’m curious how familiar is he with the US or if he was here most of his childhood?</p>
<p>I’m going to pile on the comments of given a choice pick the tour over the info session. With my oldest after 2-3 info sessions we skipped the rest … the sessions were dominated by parents asking questions that could be found in 5 minutes on the schools web-site (a lot of time for maybe 1-2 interesting comments). For accomadations my first recommendation is that your child stay with a student on campus if possible … and if not stay on campus then stay very close to campus so your child can hang around campus as much as possible. I’d also plug the idea of visiting after acceptences since the list is likely to be shorter and much easier to arrange … however if your child is thinking about applying ED that makes visiting before applying much more important.</p>
<p>If you take GT out of the list, the trip would be much less hectic. That 500 miles drive will really be a bear to do. If GT can be visited some other time, it would make this trip much more productive and enjoyable, otherwise, your schedule everyday will basically be wake up early to get to an info session, take quick tour and maybe have lunch on campus, then quickly drive or get to the airport and get to the next city/hotel at some late hours to catch a little sleep and the cycle starts again. Spend the extra day on one of the school that your son is most inclined to at the moment.</p>
<p>Let me be a voice of sanity here: this is a horrible idea. </p>
<p>Even if you take the driving out of the plan, even if you eliminate Georgia Tech from the schedule. This is a slog, a forced march for little gain, an ordeal that will become more about simple survival than any kind of information-gathering by its end.</p>
<p>I suspect that trying to work out the timing of flights, campus tours, connections and check-ins/check-outs/security screenings/flight delays/traffic tie-ups/meals/sleep and any of the thousands of snafus you’ll face along the way will prove almost impossible.</p>
<p>Do yourself and your family a huge favor – cut your destinations in half and keep the same number of days in the trip. You’ll still end up worn out by the end, but you will still (probably) be talking to one another when it’s over.</p>
<p>May I suggest a re-ordering of the visits. As it stands now you are “losing” time by stopping on the West Coast and then flying East. Reversing this approach should open up a few more flight options. Here is my suggested itinerary:</p>
<p>Saturday/Sunday: Travel Far East to Atlanta. Overnight in Atlanta.
Monday: Visit Georgia Tech in the morning, fly to Nashville in the late afternoon/early evening. Overnight in Nashville.
Tuesday: Visit Vanderbilt in the morning, fly to St. Louis in the afternoon. Overnight in St. Louis.
Wednesday: Visit Wash U then fly to Houston. Overnight in Houston.
Thursday: Visit Rice in the morning drive to Austin in the afternoon, (realistically 3 - 4 hours). Possible, though unlikely, visit UT in the late afternoon.
Friday: Tour UT in the morning. Fly to Los Angeles in the afternoon/evening. Alternatively, drive to Dallas-Ft Worth and fly directly from DFW.
Saturday: Tour USC in the morning and fly to San Jose if possible, though San Francisco will probably have more flight options. Depending on arrival time, tour Santa Clara.
Sunday: Tour Santa Clara, drive to San Francisco and fly home that night.</p>
<p>This approach allows you to pick-up time zones while also running you through a number of airline hubs, (thereby increasing the chances of flight flexibility). A word of warning though. Many schools do not conduct tours/info sessions on the weekends, so the Saturday/Sunday plan may not work regardless of the city you start in. Also, check for Spring Break schedules; some schools also drop tours during that time. In short, call/email well ahead to see if the admissions offices can make special arrangements given the distance you have to travel.</p>
<p>If the colleges can’t accommodate the Saturday/Sunday schedule, I’d recommend dropping the Georgia Tech visit and flying directly to Dallas-Ft Worth and starting your journey there.</p>
<p>Me too: In seven days, you are planning to visit seven colleges (not impossible, but that will be fatiguing in and of itself) AND to drive 1,000 miles – basically two full days of driving. And to take domestic flights that will involve around 15 hours of travel, cumulatively. And the way it works out, you are going to have to visit and travel on the same days, which means driving or flying overnight, or very late into the night. That’s, um, over-ambitious, and it’s going to make it really tough for your children to focus on the colleges.</p>
<p>Sadly, I would cut out one or two of the legs. Certainly Atlanta (or Washington, sometimes people use GT for Georgetown, which fits somewhat better with pixeljig’s list). Maybe Santa Clara, too, although it may be the prettiest part of the trip. (Your son could totally love it and still not pick it over any of the others.) Your life would probably be a lot easier if you flew into Houston or Austin or St. Louis on the way in.</p>
<p>Hi, while I can’t add to any of the itinerary suggestions, I’d like to recommend a couple travel tips:</p>
<p>This is the time to cash in your frequent flier miles and upgrade the international tickets to Business Class. You will have a better chance of resting on the plane. </p>
<p>Look into all available alternatives to driving on the first 2 or 3 days. The jet-lag makes driving brutal.</p>
<p>I would definitely try to add a couple days to the trip, the idea of “travel, tour school, find hotel” every single day sounds exhausting. Or drop a couple of schools.</p>
<p>Good luck. (We offered to take the kids back to the US for spring break to do a tour of colleges that admitted them, but both kids vetoed that idea. I’ll be interested in hearing how your trip goes.)</p>
<p>Georgetown fits better? These are all big schools with good engineering and big sport programs. My bet is on GTech. I have done something similar with schools within a few hundred miles concentrated in New England and it was crazy. If you have done something similar before, you would not even again entertain the idea of doing something like this (8days/ 7schools cross country). Flying would help but imagine spending 3-4 hours a day at/on an airport/airplane every day for 8 days straight with all the possible delays and canceled flights, rental cars, fast food, packing and unpacking every single day.</p>