Planning a college trip from CT to LA area colleges with DS. Looking at direct flights from JFK to LAX but trying to decide on hotel location that could be a central hub to visit schools of interest. Schools are as follows: USC, UCLA, Occidental, Cal Arts, Loyola Marymount and Chapman. Please suggest best place to stay and any other relevant info that would be helpful in making the trip a success. DS in interested in animation, film, visual arts. Please feel free to suggest other schools or let me know if we should not visit any of those on the list.
My son lives in the South Bay area of LA so I have been out there a lot. I don’t have any input on which hotels would be convenient – I particularly like the Manhattan Beach Marriott and the Beverly Hills Marriott. HOWEVER my impression is that hotels are incredibly expensive in southern California. When I have stayed in a less expensive one (read: <$250/night) I have hated it. And I am not that picky – I just want clean and comfortable!
UCLA and LMU are close(ish) to each other and on the west side, convenient to LAX. Cal Arts is in that same orbit though it’s up the 405 an hour or so. USC and Occidental are closer to downtown, very different dynamic. Chapman is in Orange County which is a good hour+ south, in the other direction from downtown. For all but Chapman, the most central place to use as a hub would be to stay in Hollywood or West Hollywood. There are plenty of hotels along Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, in all price ranges. For Chapman you may want to move to Orange County for a day or two, check out UC Irvine and return home from SNA (Orange County Airport).
I disagree about staying in Hollywood. Nightmare traffic, though it all is in LA. Your colleges are spread all over. This is super boring, bit I recommend you stay at the Embassy Suites in Downey. It has a good centralized location to most of your colleges. If you don’t care about traffic, then Hollywood is more interesting of course. Again though, that traffic is going to be awful. Long Beach is more interesting and you can easily go south to Chapman, up the 710 to Occidental, up the 405 to all the others. Should be more affordable too. Apparently it is actually pretty cheap to stay in the Queen Mary.
There are a lot of hotels on Sunset in W.H., but as someone who lives on the B.H./W.H. border about a 10 minute walk from some of those hotels, the biggest problem is that you will be a good 15 -20 minute drive on city streets from any freeway entrance (405, 10 or 101) and the only school you’d be close to is UCLA right off the 405. It’s a great location if you want to be close to some sight sightseeing, but assuming this is to hit all of those locations on a short trip where you’ll just be sleeping in a hotel and won’t be doing sightseeing, your most central location to all the places you need to go might be an LAX hotel. They are also usually less expensive (as LA prices go).
From LAX, you’ll be almost right next to LMU and still just about 15/20 minutes up the 405 from UCLA. From UCLA, Cal Arts is another 30 miles north on the 405.
USC is near downtown about 15 miles from UCLA, which is about the same distance it is from LAX, and it can take 45 minutes or so to get there from either location because of traffic.
You might think of staying one night out in the Pasadena area where you’ll be near Occidental, USC is about 10 to 12 miles south of Occidental, and Pomona is probably about an hour East from either. From there you can loop back to LAX which is about 50 miles from Pomona.
Just some ideas. Good luck and have a safe trip!
Any chance this poster could fly into one of the other airports? I personally hate driving anywhere near LAX and would try to avoid that.
Consider a direct flight JFK to BUR (Burbank/Pasadena) . So much easier.
And I agree with the above suggestion–at least one night in Pasadena (if you fly into Burbank, spend the entire time in Pasadena)
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/laxot-courtyard-los-angeles-pasadena-old-town/
This hotel is close to the freeway, old town restaurants, and easy access to metro rail.
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I hate changing hotels but I’ll piggy back on the above. LA traffic is like no city I’ve dealt with. I didn’t live there so I don’t know it like the posters above but had to deal with it enough over a five year span to know I wouldn’t want to be commuting from Pasadena to Orange County.
You didn’t ask about costs but you did ask about whether colleges should be added or subtracted. UCLA will be full freight as an OOS student. UC’s are officially not giving financial aid to OOS. USC will probably be cheaper because if accepted you would likely get at least some aid.
UCLA and the other UCs are not giving need based aid to OOS students. Apparently some merit aid will still be available…but highly competitive.
I live here in Los Angeles…the traffic is brutal. But, if you factor that into your drive time you will be much happier. There is no one location that will get you close to all of those schools. I would suggest staying in the west LA, Culver City areas. You will be central to UCLA, USC and LMU. Occidental is east of that, about 45 minutes or so, and USC is further east (and south) of Oxy. Chapman is in Orange County, about 80 miles away OT so. That can take anywhere from 1hr,10 minutes (middle of the day or weekend) but more likely about 2 hours.
Funny—I commute from Pasadena to OC five days a week! In the AM its around 45 minutes to Chapman. In the evening an hour to and hour and a half. The trip to USC is a piece of cake from Pasadena. Occidental is right over the hill. (Traffic is much worse on the West Side.) How many days will you be here? You are checking out Cal Arts. Is your student a visual artist?
wooops just saw your visual arts reference. Check out Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
http://www.artcenter.edu/academics/undergraduate-degrees/entertainment-design/overview.html
Fly in and out of SNA airport (John Wayne) in Orange County. 1000 times more civilized than LAX. Or LongBeach, that’s a nice little airport.
Thanks to all for the great suggestions. I will look into each of the areas/hotels suggested to determine what works best for our time/budget. We are planning to stay for one week and may have to curtail or prioritize the list as it may not be feasible to do it all. As a New England/NYC person I find it funny to hear you talk about the 405 and the other highways. We worry about 95 traffic and the bridges! I am also thankful for the information of the lack of OOS aid for UCLA (which I should have known!) and will discourage DS from that school.
Traffic can be bad. Keep sigalert.com up on your lap top and have the waze app on your smart phone and you will be fine. Timing is everything. Take it from someone who has been commuting in So Cal for over 35 years.
BTW–a week is going to be plenty of time for your school visits.You will have more than enough time to throw in some fun and sightseeing as well.
We did a six college visit with DD. But our schools were a little different. We were there for eight days.
We flew into San Diego.
First visit was University if San Diego on Monday. Monday night we drove to Orange County.
Went to Chapman on Tuesday morning. Then drove directly to Claremont McKenna for the afternoon. Both in Tuesday.
Spent Tuesday night with relatives and drove to Pepperdine on Wednesday.
Spent dinner with relatives in greater LA area and then drove back to San Diego on Wednesday night.
Took a very early shuttle to San Jose on Thursday. Did morning tour and info session at Santa Clara.
Then drove over to Stanford just to see the pretty campus. Flew back to San Diego Thursday night.
Spent Friday and Saturday relaxing by the pool at relatives and flew back to the east coast on Sunday.
It was lots of fun…and plenty of time.
I will let the LA driving pros give their advice but here’s a couple hotels if you are in their neighborhood. Nothing around USC except downtown hotels - too expensive then big parking fee on top of that. The Radisson across from USC is nice but always seems full.
I have students at USC, so I stay in Manhattan Beach (Marriott) when down there.
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/laxmn-manhattan-beach-marriott/
The Embassy Suites that is located near Chapman is really newish and nice if you need to stay in that area, and suite style comfy.
Don’t stress the traffic, it is a fact of life there, just take in socal while sitting on the 10 and 405 and enjoy!!!