College Tour Clusters

Applying to College
1

After reading another thread that included what I’m calling “College Tour Clusters,” I thought that perhaps a thread focused on schools within a relative proximity might make for a useful thread. Apologies if a post in this form already exists, but we’re getting close to tour season for families - we just had to reserve our September hotel rooms for move-in week at a potential landing spots so if there any checklists lunatics like us in the gang, maybe you’ll find this useful. Anyway, I’ll start with one: The Cornell Cluster:

Cornell to Hamilton - 1:42 min
Cornell to Colgate - 1:25
Cornell to Syracuse - 1 hour
Cornell to Binghamton - 58 minutes
Cornell to Hartwick - 1:42
Cornell to SUNY Geneseo - 1:50
Cornell to Rochester (RIT) - 1:43
Cornell to Hobart/William Smith College - 58 min

*I nearly forgot to include Ithaca College, which is 5 min away and 3-4 lights away.

6 Likes
2

The PENN cluster: Getting through Philadelphia and its outskirts can be an absolute nightmare - have heard numerous “Blue Route” horror stories, but these are the distances in the very best of circumstances. I noticed that Penn & Hopkins are listed as less than a 2-hour drive, but I have zero faith in highway traffic going through Maryland. In any case…

Penn to Drexel - 4 min
Penn to Temple - 10 min
Penn to Swarthmore - 19 min
Penn to Bryn Mawr - 20 min
Penn to Villanova - 21 min
Penn to Haverford - 23 min
Penn to U Delaware - 43 min
Penn to Princeton - 49 min
Penn to Muhlenberg - 1 hour
Penn to Lehigh - 1:04
Penn to Lafayette - 1:17*
Penn to Franklin & Marshall - 1:18*

*Penn, it seems, is equidistant between Lafayette and F&L but those schools are a good 90 minutes from each other.

4 Likes
3

If you tour all those colleges, they’ll all be a blur. Pick and choose ahead and spend time at a small number of places.

1 Like
4

Absolutely. I mean, you don’t order everything off the restaurant offers in one sitting, right? But it’s nice to see the menu.

9 Likes
5

You might benefit more by making peer clusters. For example someone applying to Penn is unlikely to apply to Temple.

3 Likes
6

I’d add University of Rochester to the RIT stop.

I created an Excel doc with clusters when we were doing visits. I’ll see if I can find it.

3 Likes
7

Nice catch, @vwlizard.

8

This set of schools overlaps with the New York Six consortium of liberal arts colleges, which comprises Colgate, Hamilton, HWS, Skidmore, St. Lawrence and Union.

2 Likes
9

On that note, I’d add Saint Joseph’s University to your Philly / PA tour.

3 Likes
10

What helped our tours was a decent loop or a line (if flying) that we could do over 2-4 days. Maybe that’s what you’re planning on doing? We did a tour that started in upstate NY and ended in the Philly area. Started in Syracuse and hit Hamilton, Colgate, Bucknell, Lehigh and Villanova…and flew into Syracuse and out of Philadelphia. This was based on the union of showing my DS a range of schools that also were in the range of possibilities based on his stats.

2 Likes
11

So far for S24 (engineering/design focused) we’ve done the following tour clusters:

Boston area - BU, Tufts, Northeastern, Harvard, MIT and Brown (flew in and out of Boston, rented a car for the day to day-trip to Providence)

Los Angeles area - Pomona, Harvey Mudd, USC, Cal Tech (already saw UCLA) (flew in and out of LAX, borrowed a car)

Next up:
PA/MD area - Penn, Swarthmore, Haverford, Drexel and Johns Hopkins (flying in and out of Philly, taking the train to Baltimore for a day-trip)

NY area - NYU, Fordham, Columbia, Princeton (flying in and out of Newark, staying in NYC, train to Princeton)

CA UC schools and Cal Polys - UCB, UCLA, UCSD, UCSC, UCI, UCD (we’re residents, so will wait until after admissions)

Still left to see, but not sure what route to take, or others to see in the area:
CWRU
CMU
Wash U St. Louis
Yale
Northwestern

2 Likes
12

Generally another approach to take with visits, especially since the bigger guys stopped caring about demonstrated interest, is to only visit the schools that are contenders for EA/ED. Everything else can be visited after you know the final list post admission decisions. Cheaper to just throw in an application. Also the EA/ED schools, you can do a better quality visit – stay overnight in the dorm, attend a class, find some seniors from your high school and have a lunch or dinner with them etc.

3 Likes
13

Yeah, since D21 got very few in-person visits, so I’m going overboard with S24. Really enjoying our time traveling together (DH joins when possible, but not really into the tours.) We’ve had some fantastic talks about life, college, etc. S24 is totally different than D21, so we’re looking at all new schools for him. And since we didn’t travel for approximately 2 straight years, the pent-up joy of travel is kicking in as well. And, since D21 is near Philly, we get to visit them as well and even see a play they’re in at school, which is an added bonus!

6 Likes
14

Of course that is the reason I’ve done a few college visits as well. When would a teen hangout with me otherwise?

1 Like
15

We found being flexible on these grand tours is important. Ditching one that becomes a clear no to start heading to the next gives time to decompress, eat a real meal, and reset. No more than two formal tours in a day is mentally productive and 1 formal and one just driving around tended to work better.

Points for anyone who managed to get UNC and Duke info sessions and tours knocked out in the same day.

5 Likes
16

Yes! And I’d add Bucknell or Lehigh as well.

17

We did! You can do the NC tours - WakeForest and Elon one day, then UNC-Chap and Duke the next. Also did W&L and UVA in one day, then Richmond and Wm&Mary in one day.

2 Likes
18

Lehigh/Lafayette/Muhlenberg

Hamilton/Colgate
UNION/Bard

Earlham/Denison/Kenyon. Oberlin

Bucknell/F&M/Dickinson/Gettysburg

Bowdoin/Bates/Colby

Some of these actually had driving directions to the others in their admissions office.

4 Likes
19

There are a couple of different ways to do an Ohio loop.

I’d say Oberlin/Wooster/Denison is the first triad.
You could add Case Western before Oberlin
You can also do Miami University/University of Dayton and Ohio University.

2 Likes
20

Pitt and WVU are only an hour from each other.

2 Likes