<p>D2 and I will be looking at east coast colleges in February and I'm trying to find info about tips that will make our trip easier from others who have visited the same schools. For example, best way to get to the school from the airport or Amtrak station, which hotels are best/closest/most convenient, if there's a logic to the order in which we see two DC schools, etc. D1 and I learned along the way when we took a similar trip (different schools and before I knew about CC) but it seems like somewhere on this forum must be the type of info I'm searching for! I have looked at the 'college visit' section but that's almost exclusively sharing views of the actual schools; I'm looking to not reinvent the wheel in terms of logistics. I've also tried using the search function but to no avail...can anyone more seasoned that I tell me if there's a forum that covers the logistics of a college tour or do I need to post specific questions? Thanks!</p>
<p>College tours will differ so dramatically from one student to the next, that it’s hard to give generic advice. I think you need to post specific questions.</p>
<p>Others may disagree, but I will say that it worked best for us to visit only one school each day on a multi-day trip. DS and I were fried the one day we toured two colleges! We couldn’t even think straight by the end.</p>
<p>Agree, ask some specific questions or about specific colleges e.g. can you tour college A and college B in the same day. Or I’m going to College A, B, C should I drive or take the train, etc. Both my sons and I often saw one college in the AM and one in the PM, but everyone is different in their tolerance for info overload!</p>
<p>Best advice I can give is to seriously limit the number of schools you are going to visit to the schools your child is most interested in attending and which have the closest match of best fit programs. Next, try to cluster your visit to those schools into one or two main areas of the East coast (ex. visiting Manhattan-NYU, Columbia, Barnard, etc., visiting Washington DC-American, GWU, U. Maryland College Park, visiting Boston-Boston University, Tufts, MIT, Harvard, etc., visiting Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon, U. of Pittsburgh, etc.). Look at Priceline.com to bid for cheaper hotels. Check Amtrak to see which schools are on the Amtrak train line, etc.</p>
<p>It’s not uncommon for posters to list their potential colleges and just ask for route suggestions. I’ve found this forum to be very good with logistics and planning. </p>
<p>While I agree that it’s not good to visit more then one college in a day, if you are pressed for time and the colleges are close together, it’s do-able. Just make sure to take notes. For instance if you come out my way Lehigh, Lafayette, Muhlenberg, Moravian and DeSales are within 30 minutes of each other. Lot’s of people see Lehigh and Lafayette in one day.</p>
<p>One of the best arguments about starting the search Junior year is that you can do several weekend trips over two years and (hopefully) not have to do the two colleges in one day for a week.</p>
<p>Thanks for the feedback…I guess I’ll just have to post the specifics. We’re coming from the west coast so this is the one and only trip east, unless a year from May D needs to see a school to help make a final decision. Since I took a similar trip with D1, I feel okay seeing two schools in one day (when possible/necessary) but feel strongly only when school is in session. We just added Elon and the only way to see it is on a Sat but we’re making an exception as the alternative is to skip it altogether. </p>
<p>So, here’s our itinerary. If anyone has any suggestions (transportation, must-sees, hotel, rent car vs. taxi, etc, I’d love to hear:</p>
<p>Friday–fly to Greensboro, spend night, info session/tour Sat morning at Elon
(we’ve never been to North Carolina–all suggestions very welcome)
Sat early evening-Monday morning elsewhere with family
Monday morning arrive in Boston via Amtrak. Afternoon tour at Boston College.
Overnight in Boston – tour Northeastern in the morning (Northeastern doesn’t have class that Monday or we would have tried to do both in one day)
Tuesday night fly or Amtrak to DC
Wednesday info session and tour GW and American
Wednesday overnight in DC or Phil (Amtrak between the two cities)
Thursday-Friday Phil (D1 is a freshman in Philadelphia so will probably stay near her campus and visit Drexel, Lehigh and Villanova (I assume I’ll rent a car but there’s probably a logic in what order the schools are seen.)</p>
<p>Any and all suggestions are welcome!</p>
<p>But for Elon, I would say fly into DC and fly back from Boston and use Amtrack in between. You may be able to take the train from Greenboro (I don’t know) to DC, but for sure you can easily go Amtrak from DC through Philly to Boston. You seem to be doing a lot of backtracking, but there may be a reason for you to be specific places on specific days.</p>
<p>Hat, I wish we could just start at the farthest southern point and fly home from the most northern point (or vice versa) but, for a variety of reasons, we do have to do some back and forth. Unfortunately, we do have to visit the different cities in this order.</p>
<p>In Philadelphia, if you’re staying in the Center you can avoid having a car for a visit to Drexel. So maybe best is to visit Drexel in the morning. Then (easiest is to do so with a rental) visit Villanova in the afternoon. Drive to Lehigh and visit the following morning. Then return to Philadelphia that afternoon. I doubt that you can effectively vist all three colleges in one day.</p>
<p>Collage1 - For the Elon visit, another option would be to fly into RDU (Raleigh/Durham) instead of Greensboro. Its only a 20min further drive, but all flights from Cal are half the cost.</p>
<p>Just a general comment, try to get to your destination the evening prior, unless both you and your student are extreme morning people. The evenings are “down time” as far as college visits are concerned (no scheduled info sessions or tours) - plus you may be able to see the next day’s campus in the evening.</p>
<p>Also agree with taking great notes the minute you return to the car. They don’t have to be earth-shattering - “tour guide wore purple dress, walk to dining hall was extreme uphill” - just things to jog both your and your students’ memories later. Take a camera and/or video camera.</p>
<p>American and GW are pretty easy to do in one day unless you also want to tour GW’s satellite campus - then you’ll have to do a bit of juggling to get in three tours and two info sessions. GW has some sort of lunch with a student program, but my son bailed out of it as he hated GW by the time the tour was over. (He decided he wanted a real campus and the satellite campus would not make up for it.) AU will let you have lunch in their large cafeteria. If you have a car be warned that the GW parking garage is very expensive! OTOH the metro stop is right on campus. AU is a mile from the subway, but you can use their shuttle without a special pass. They also have free parking, you get a pass for your windshield.</p>
<p>
True, though if you just want to sneak a look at the Mt. Vernon campus on one’s way between the two main campuses, it’s pretty much right on the way–if you Google map it, just drag the route from Massachusetts Ave. to Canal Rd. along the river. The Mt. Vernon campus is on Foxhall Rd., still marked on the map as “Mt. Vernon Junior College and Seminary.” We discovered this accidentally while navigating out of town from the Mt. Vernon campus; we hadn’t intended to visit American, but there it was.</p>
<p>^Easy in a car (we drove right past the campus too) and my son just slouched further down in the back seat. Not possible on the Metro. If you take GW shuttle bus you’ll probably have to go back downtown to catch the Metro unless you call a taxi to take you to American (if you didn’t do American first.) You can see it from Foxhall Road which is a direct shot from GW. It’s only if you want to do the official tour that it gets tricky because the Mt. V campus only has them at specific times. (Our original plan had been to do the late afternoon tour.) I know the logistics of it all were sufficiently complicated that we ended up driving to DC and seeing American in the afternoon, scheduling a full day for GW which he bailed on, and then we had a third day for Georgetown. But I’ve done the two college a day thing with places further apart.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the suggestions. We’re going to use miles for the flights to and from CA so I’m not all that price sensitive but I will see if we can fly nonstop to RDU rather than make the stop to get to Greensboro…either way, it appears we’ll need a rental car. Hotel suggestions anyone?</p>
<p>In Philadelphia, we will be staying in City Center so Drexel will be easy and I won’t need a car. Are Villanova and Lehigh doable in one day? I’d love to just rent a car for one day and not have it overnight if possible. </p>
<p>DC–would prefer to not have a car so I’m glad to hear American isn’t too far from GW as I was hoping we could just cab it. I’m somewhat familiar with GW but not AU at all–is it better to stay near one school over the other? I think they both have morning and afternoon tour options so I don’t think it will matter schedule-wise. Good point about the satellite campus–we might just not be able to make it there. Since I know a little about DC, I think I will use Priceline for a hotel there…</p>
<p>Boston–would really prefer not to drive in Boston but perhaps that’s best? I don’t know Boston at all…we’ll arrive in the morning and go on an afternoon tour of BC. No idea how we get from the train station to BC (maybe I do need to rent a car?). Since we’ll have a morning tour at Northeastern the next day, we’ll stay near Northeastern. Any easy way to get between the two schools? Hotel suggestions? Actually, I’m realizing we’ll have luggage and can’t go straight to BC…hmm, I think Boston might present some logistical challenges. Perhaps we’ll have to have a car there. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Thanks for any and all help–I really appreciate the insight and thoughts.</p>
<p>I nearly always stay with family in DC, but I’d guess you have more options for hotels in the GW area. Boston is not much fun to drive in if you aren’t familiar with it, but both colleges have good public transportation options. Boston college is on the green line of the T and Northeastern on both the green and orange lines. So you shouldn’t have any problem getting from one to the other.</p>
<p>The only thing I can add to all this info is to remember that Amtrak is often many hours delayed so leave plenty of time if you’re taking Amtrak to a location.</p>
<p>collage1–Boston driving is not quite as bad as its reputation (note the word “quite”). It depends a lot on what parts of the city you’ll be driving in. Most of the universities can be visited without going through the parts of the city that are the biggest headache for drivers (i.e., the downtown). </p>
<p>However, if you’re visiting BC and Northeastern there’s probably no reason to rent a car. Just stay in the Back Bay, near Copley Square, from which you can hop on a Green Line train to either campus (BC is on the “B” line, Northeastern on the “E” line–both schools have stops named after them). There are tons of hotels near Copley; most of them aren’t cheap, but if you subtract the price of a rental car, you probably won’t find anything much cheaper in the city, and you’re right in the nicest part of town for visitors. The Colonnade, Lenox, Westin, Fairmont Copley Plaza, Marriott Copley Place and Sheraton Boston are all in that general area and are probably safe bets. Depending on how much you like walking, you might not even want to bother to get on a train to Northeastern from those hotels, which are all within about a 15-20 minute walk of the campus.</p>
<p>in DC, best to park car and stay intown. I would stay in Dupont Circle because there are many good hotels and places open evenings for dinner to type into kayak.com (pick Dupont Circle after you get to the DC hotel page), then evaluate at tripadvisor…I stay at the Kimpton hotels…the Topaz always works for us, but Jury’s and Marriott are well representd there…near a really good metro station where you can hop on easily. The Watergate area is too deserted at night for my taste ditto near the Smithsonian. The Topaz is next door to a great hotel/restaurant with a full breakfast frequented by in towners and cozy…Dupont Circle is a safe place to walk to restaurants </p>
<p>Plug for Furman if you are doing Carolina schools…new President announced this week, excellent school</p>
<p>if it was me, I would probably ditch Elon on this trip. Doesn’t fit with the territory and I do live near Elon and know students there now although I am a Furman grad…Elon and Furman have way more overlap that the other schools you mention</p>
<p>LOL… Ditch any idea of Furman and don’t miss Elon. (Sorry Faline2)</p>