<p>So my older one is flying roundtrip, Seattle to DC (on the way to Princeton), for $210 - the cheapest it is has been in five years. The other one is using some frequent flyer miles, and will fly roundtrip to BWI for $225 - these both include flying home around Christmas time. So our costs will be reduced by at least 50% over what they have been.</p>
<p>I'm just amazed at the flying bargains out there.</p>
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So kids from low- and middle-income families will be the ones without a parent accompanying them for move-in, without parents attending Parents Weekend, and at school over Thanksgiving and spring breaks
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</p>
<p>Frugality is not reserved for low- and middle-income families. Some of us full-pay families do not see the necessity or value in move-in, Parents Weekend, Thanksgiving or Spring Break trips.</p>
<p>We are not going to move-in or Parents Weekend, have never had the kids come home for Thanksgiving, and never pay for spring break trips. Media mail shipping for books is incredibly inexpensive.</p>
<p>We are middle income and are digging deep to fly with our S for move-in day. There are many sessions and activities for parents that day, including dinner with the provost, and we want to take full advantage since we won't be returning for parents' weekend in February. </p>
<p>Since this is his freshman year, I want to become familiar with where he will be living. He won't be returning for Thanksgiving or Spring Break, so I feel this is a nice compromise.</p>
<p>We got our tickets before the 1 bag rule went into effect, so we can still take 2 bags and probably won't have to send anything separately.</p>
<p>I'm just amazed at the flying bargains out there</p>
<p>Find us some for Accra in the spring please .:)</p>
<p>COA is comprised of averages. There may not even be a single student whose costs match that number. It certainly is not going to reflect the cost for students who live far away and need to take costly flights to get home and back. However, distance is not the only factor that makes it pricey. There are some flight routes that are cheaper than others and if your student takes one in that category, you can do pretty well. If not, and he comes home often, well, that is going to be a significant line item in the budget.</p>
<p>We are going to be facing this soon. My two older ones had direct flights available from home to school, and could often get some great bargains. Even then, we lost out a few times when plans changed at the last minute, and we had to buy on short notice. My third one is going to a school that is located where there are no direct flights to the local airport. He has to transfer flights and then take a taxi to college. Or take a shuttle from a major city that takes nearly 2 hours to get him to the college town. The COA for the school for out of staters does not begin to address this situation, much less have adjustment for the rise in gas prices. So transportation costs are truly an issue when you have kids who live far away.</p>
<p>NYU doesn't even put a number on their website for the travel part of the COA. It just says 'varies'. The COA for next year is a few $$ shy of 52K and lord knows they don't want to scare anybody by adding to that!</p>
<p>Well, if my son wanted to come home it would only cost about $30 :-)</p>
<p>"Find us some for Accra in the spring please ."</p>
<p>KLM (via Vayama.com) is already below $1,500 for next March, and when Delta starts competing there, I bet it will even go lower.</p>
<p>P.S. Contact Council Travel in Seattle, and have them keep looking for you. They are great!</p>
<p>Michone,</p>
<p>Look into Southwest. You can fly from Detroit to Long Island Islip for under $300. They are currently only taking reservations through the end of Oct. and S will have to change in Baltimore. But the cost is worth it. </p>
<p>We use SWA to fly S & his instrument (has its own ticket) to Buffalo and pay for a limo service at less that what one ticket directly to Rochester would cost.</p>
<p>Part of the real deal with my kids was that if they traveled far from home we would not bring them home for the short breaks (Thanksgiving, etc.). We have already put Son #1 on notice that if airfares don't drop before Christmas (right now at close to $1000 because he's in a Tier 3 airport and we live in a Tier 3 airport) that he will be taking Amtrak cross country at Christmas and that will be hassle enough for him and us because there is no close Amtrak station. He has a car and can drive cross country for Spring break if he feels the need, but both my husband and I are in agreement that we do not want him driving cross country in the winter even as a very experienced winter driver. Unfortunately for our kids, the "budget" discussion when looking at colleges included not only room, board, tuition and books...but also included just how much we were willing to shell out to get him home. I think it's only fair to the kids to spell that stuff out...then there are "no surprises". Fortunately, son 1's school has enough long distance students that many do not go home at the short breaks and at least this year Son #1 enjoyed his breaks with the "homeless students". He even elected to spend his spring break skiing instead of traveling home for the week. Depends on the kid, I guess, how they handle the distance and the need to come home. If we had one that "needed" to come home more than once a year or so we would not let them go farther than we could pick them up in a day if need be and that would be the end of that discussion since there are plenty of fabulous colleges in the Midwest to pick from.</p>
<p>I agree with Calmom and Bay. I (as a full-paying frugal parent) do not see the need to fly my child home for Thanksgiving. The term ends 2-3 weeks later, and flying during that week is a huge hassle. Southwest has a terrific frequent flyer plan for college students. Only 4 round trips to get a free one!</p>
<p>We're in CA and S wants to be on the east coast. We've made the parameters a maximum 1-hr. drive from a major city that we can fly to non-stop, but with flights, that still becomes very pricey.</p>
<p>He's very independent, and the need to come home will probably be less for him that it will be for ME to have him come home!</p>
<p>He's very independent, and the need to come home will probably be less for him that it will be for ME to have him come home!</p>
<p>That is true even if they are only a couple hundred miles away.
After freshman year D came home for the winter holiday and a couple other times during the year. ( but not that she was * home* when she was home ;) I'm sure you know what I mean)
Now that she has chosen to live there for a while after graduation two years ago, ( which is always something to keep in mind)
We hardly ever see her but it is sure a lot easier to coordinate the girls schedules having them close.
As it is I expect that we will be lucky if we can find three days they can both manage to be free at the same time this summer.</p>
<p>( its gonna be bad enough to pay for gas for a three day visit- but much harder if we had to fly)</p>
<p>"He's very independent, and the need to come home will probably be less for him that it will be for ME to have him come home!"</p>
<p>"That is true even if they are only a couple hundred miles away."</p>
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<p>Very true, hadn't really thought about that! Only have 1 kid, and while I know it will be an emotional challenge when he's gone, I think the reality that it's only a year away is sinking in.</p>
<p>This might not help for undergraduates so much as graduate students, but if your children are making trips for the school (to present papers, for example) or for employers (our son had his first while still in college at age 13), consider suggesting to your child that he/she request a flight back to you before returning to campus so there is only one flight on you or your child rather than two. Our son goes to present a paper in England this week and he asked the lab to have his return flight be to us rather than Boston and they were fine with this. He also went direct from a family vacation in Minneapolis to a business trip in Norway, but we didn't know about that trip in time to save ourselves buying him a ticket back to Boston (and Northwest had a $200 charge for even canceling the flight let alone not being willing to transfer the ticket for any price, so we never bothered to cancel and just had him be a no-show). But at least the lab was good about letting him leave from that location rather than forcing him to fly round trip from the same city and cost us the family vacation entirely or at least have us cut it even shorter (as it was already being cut a day short for him to get to Norway when they wanted him there) as we would have had to do if he had been forced to leave for Norway from Boston.</p>
<p>Also consider tacking on a family visit if the child is sent on business near you. Our son had a business trip to a state only about an hour from us and he asked if he could take a few vacation days to visit with family before flying back to Boston and was granted the request. Now that might have been due to his being a minor still and thus people being more understanding of family visits, but I'm not sure a regular aged student wouldn't be granted the same request as most people understand that seeing family is good (at least so long as the family relations are good).</p>
<p>So try to plan family visits and business back to back when possible.</p>
<p>We find that when the food service closes down for breaks, that changes the math. For example, Cpeltz, how is it cheaper to go skiing for a week of school break than fly home to eat family-cooked meals? </p>
<p>I wonder why you threw in that "non-stop" flight caveat into your list of constraints? It's his time to travel, and they can do reading and so forth on long airport days.</p>
<p>I like non-stops, too, but between Buffalo(where we live) and SoCal (where S-2 attends), there are only one-stops. Not that you'd want to send him to Buffalo, necessarily..I'm just saying that if you restrict his list to non-stops and only one-hour ground transpo from the non-stop airport, are you limiting him to: Boston, NYC, Chicago...well that's not very limited. But it could be that a One-stop will end up with him close to his campus, in a smaller city. This might open up his choices of colleges and unis in the Northeast. Play around on Expedia.com to see if you agree with me.. or not. This whole post was unsolicited advice, I realize.</p>
<p>Kayak.com is the site to find the cheapest flights without playing games. But things can change over 4 years. We had first son at a city with loads of flights as it was a hub. That situation tanked half way through, and boy, did the costs go up. </p>
<p>Some colleges that are located near ski country offer all kinds of cheap lift packages. My one child goes skiing regularly in the winter because his best friend's family own a weekend home in Vermont right near some terrific ski areas, and he goes for very little. Nothing like we would pay for a week of skiing. My third son is going to a ski city, and students can get a pass to go skiing at most of the nearby resorts for ones set price for the year. A popular past time of those kids, and there are regular shuttles, buses and cars going regularly to the various places. He is looking forward to buying one of those passes to use, as skiing for us has been a real luxury and rare event, that he so enjoys.</p>
<p>The problem with those danged Thanksgiving flights is that if anything goes wrong with your kid's flight, and you are truly up against a wall due to the very heavy holiday traffic concentrated in a very short time period. I have known kids stranded at any number of airports when things have gone haywire. Last year was particularly bad in this regard. A non-stop does reduce the odds of that happening. We are fighting a situation right now where son did not take a flight with a change in Cincy because the flight was not going to get him there in time to make that connection. This happened when the American Airlines planes were all grounded, and getting any alternate flight was impossible. Because he was only going for a day, it caused all kinds of compllications as we got the ticket on line. He could not get back the same day if he got there much later, so he cancelled, and we got billed anyways. What a mess. I have found that for a little extra, direct fllight can be worth it, and are essential if you need to get there.</p>
<p>If the Thanksgiving holiday is only 4 days and not a week, and the kid is cross-country, I say just hang it up. </p>
<p>For freshman year, we hoped he'd find a nearby friend to visit, but by November, he didn't yet know anyone he felt that comfortable to ask. So instead, we contacted some cousins with age-mate college kids. They were so pleased to include a long-lost branch of the family at their T-day dinner table! He slept over there for 4 days, too, so got that psychic break, By next year, he'll know more local friends (already does), so I'm not worried.</p>
<p>The flight home we didn't expect to fund, but did, was Spring Break. His friends were all going to fancy, expensive locations in Mexico or for upscale skiing at resorts. The food service was closing down, although the dorms stayed open.</p>
<p>When we tallied up the cost of restaurant take-out meals for a week, and realized too that we missed him, we just decided to spring for the week-long Spring Break at home. I'd be surprised if we have to do that in sophomore year. Again, perhaps by then he'll know a wider range of people or modest ways to spend a week in Spring.</p>
<p>What we believed, and still hold as our goal, is to fund the flights to and from campus, and to-and-from during mid-December/January. That's just two round-trips per year.</p>
<p>As for how often we'd want to visit him, I think that's our problem not his. I don't believe kids should have to position themselves for the convenience of their parents' visitation schedules. There's too much else at stake for a kid's college education.</p>
<p>Though we often have large family and friends gatherings at Thanksgiving, I know that the airlines are at overload at that time of the year. In the case of my son who cannot take a direct flight home, and who is not going to want to miss any class time (imperative for him as he is on a block schedule), I doubt he will be home for Thanksgiving. Just too much of a chance that things will not work out and he gets stranded somewhere since he will have to change planes. My other kids had more leeway in their schedules, and by using that leeway and leaving a day before and leaving home a day early, they were able to avoid some of the crush. But, they too have been caught in airline decisions that have left them stewing at an airport, and that's with no transfers. </p>
<p>All in all, I would have preferred my kids to have chosen schools within 3 hours of home. It did not happen. This time around, we did make sure that any colleges that were farther than that had something special not attainable nearby. Even then, the financials were a big deal this time, and travel costs were entered into that. It would be naive not to consider them, as they can be a big deal in terms of cost, frequency of coming home, visits, how quickly you can get there/he can get home issues. </p>
<p>Most of the kids I know seem to be coming home less frequently after freshman year. Many stay near their college even in the summer. I know that I never went home summers after I went to school as I found job opportunities, friends, activities that were more part of my life around college than at my parent's home. My college home became the primary one. That is something that often happens.</p>