My D and I agreed 100% that she shouldn’t apply to any colleges that were closer than 2 hours to home. I know me, I would suddenly find myself popping by for a chat if she was too close. Not good for either of us. Not that she necessarily would have got in, but the self-imposed distance automatically ruled out quite a few excellent colleges.
ucbalumnus: Back then, that wasn’t going to happen. I was a very good candidate, pretty clearly the top boy at my school, and – again, back then – it had been a long time since the top boy at that school had not been accepted everywhere he applied. The school sent 6-8 kids per year to those colleges. I only applied to two of them, and I was a legacy at one. Everyone agreed that could be my safety. It was a different age.
If I had been a different person, my parents would have had different rules. I had a sort-of adopted older brother who needed a lot of support, and for whom English was not his first language. He lived at home and attended a nearby public flagship, then went thousands of miles away to business school. If you measure the outcome of education by lifetime earnings (and you stop measuring for both of us at the age he died), his education was far more successful than mine.
This is a very interesting thread, but it also makes me sad. I remember when my D first talked about colleges last year she said her dream schools were UCLA or USC. She had seen the campuses on tv shows and movies. I immediately said, “Oh! That’s so far away. You can go wherever you want, but CA is just so far”. That was probably bad parenting, but it was my first reaction. Nowadays she talks about other schools, but doesn’t mention CA anymore. We live on the eastcoast. How do parents deal with their kids going across the country? How do you know they can handle being so far? What if they are burnt out and just need to come home for the weekend? I guess in mnay cases the kids manage, but it’s the parents who have the hardest time. I guess when the time comes to applying to schools I might have to put my fears and own needs aside. On the other hand, I might just say go where you want, but don’t go past Ohio! Also, airfares can be so expensive and have to be considered. Just for the heck of it I checked fight costs from NYC. It’s cheaper to fly to Chicago or Orlando then it is to fly to Pittsburgh or Cleveland. OP,how many times a year did your D come home from Boston?
I live in Wisconsin. My older daughter went to college in southern California. There were a few times, crises, when I really wished she were within an easy drive, but most of the time, I knew the distance didn’t matter; I could provide the necessary support by phone (and probably it was better by phone than in person).
My friends live in the flagship city and looked everywhere but there for schools. They they figured out they were passing up the best school for their son. He ended up there, lived in a dorm, came home on Sunday nights for dinner and to do laundry (and brought his cousin with him). He could control how often he went home, his hours, his schedule. My nephew is at our flagship about 40 minutes from his home. He often comes to the city to work on a Saturday, goes to his mother’s for dinner, steals a bunch of food. When he was a freshman and living in a shared dorm room, he often came home just to get some sleep. Again, he controls the schedule.
D#1 is a little over 2 hours away, and it’s just a little too far. She’d like to come home more but she doesn’t have a car. She did show up on Saturday night, did laundry, played with her dog, and went back about 5pm. D#2 is 2000 miles away and can only come back at Christmas and summers. She only has W-Sun off for Thanksgiving so this year is just hanging around school. Last year she went to her boyfriend’s family, but she didn’t really like it because of the hassle so isn’t doing that again. Spring break she has to play for her team.
California is a large enough state that one can stay instate without being close to home- and attend a top tier public U. Instead of distance from home you should discuss where she wants to go TO, instead of being away FROM. There are plenty of good U’s to consider, public and private, between the east and west coast regions that would still count as being very far from home.
The real question is which region is she interested in? Does she want the east coast region instead of the west coast? They are very different (as are Northern and Southern California). I think you should have a discussion of her expectations.
For myself- I desperately wanted to leave town for college growing up in the flagship’s suburb. Need blind admissions were unheard of back then, and elite schools were barely becoming coed. A different world. I ranked an OOS school number one for NMS-I’ll always wonder if I would have gotten one of the 4 year scholarships instead of a one offer if I had ranked the too close to home school I ended up going to. Thankfully we managed dorm life and I was a world away. Did my laundry in the dorm- my mom had to go to a laundromat. Escaped a not good home environment as well…
Aargh- took too long trying to edit and can’t. Junky post above.
Have you taken the time to visit the CA schools you mentioned? She may see that one of them is a great fit and has just the right program for her. The Norcal/Socal swap that so many kids do is a great distance, 5-6 hour drive, but easy one hour flight with cheap Southwest options - which you probably already know, but if you can just get her to see it that way. 
In my world/social circles, this is a constant issue. Going away to college is definitely the norm, and most kids do that, but there are lots of local colleges, including Penn, and a substantial number of kids wind up going there, too. One friend had a son at Penn, he and his wife could literally see his kid’s dorm from their offices, which were about 15 blocks away, and his first semester the kid had no contact whatsoever with his parents from the first day of college to Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving when he showed up at their house, unannounced, with his laundry. (It was an easy trip on public transportation.) Of course they called him, and texted, but he never called back and only responded minimally to the texts to tell them he wasn’t going to respond. The parents read the kid the riot act; they told him to pretend he was in California and call them once a week, or they were going to come looking for him.
Most of the kids I know who are or have been in college locally have a lot more contact with their parents than that, even if they live in dorms. The once-a-week lunch or laundry stop-by are common, and of course they usually make it to family events.They grow up and become independent anyway. No one has been socially retarded by going to college locally.
I’m with Happy1 in that we live in an area with lots of great college options and so having to fly to college would be an added expense and hassle. If there were a very good reason for that particular college over ones that are closer, that would have been fine. If the costs, with air travel, were similar, that too would have been fine. But I was not interestd in paying a premium because they wanted a warm climate or to be able to ski more easily. They have the rest of their lives to live wherever they choose.
One of my kids went in-state and we did not just “drop in”. We have our own lives, work, and at the time a younger sibling. We saw him fairly often at the beginning of freshman year and not very often after that. There was the perk of being able to have us pick him up when he was really sick and take care of him.
I would add a “parent choice” school or two to the application in case she changes her mind and wants to stay a bit closer. Going to Southern Cal from the north or vice versa is certainly not “close to home”.
We did not limit any of our kids on where to go to school. Even though they all applied and were accepted to schools across the county, they all decided to attend good schools within 1 hour drive of home - and we are all glad they did! As parents got to see them perform in concerts, plays and games - and our kids got to show off their skills.
This worked because we were able to commit as parents not to “just show up” at their door - and we lived up to our commitment. Our kids realized that attending any college is a different world - regardless of location - and we visited only when we were invited. IMHO it worked out great for both parents and kids, and I think we were all very happy the kids did NOT dismiss good schools because they were close.
I’m not sure what would have happened had our oldest not decided to stay close - perhaps the others might have also traveled away - but fortunately it worked out well the first time, and the younger kids enjoyed visiting their big brother - and maybe remembered that when they were deciding where to go. Good luck to all that have yet to decide!
@citymama9 it really depends on the kid. With some kids, you just know they’ll handle the distance fine, and others probably won’t even want to stray too far. One of my sisters went 2,000 miles away for college, and never moved back. Another sister went to college only an hour away, and has only lived within a few miles of where we grew up most of her life. I went to college 2 hours away and went home often at first, but only once or twice a semester after that first one. Since then, I’ve lived all over the place. For each of us, what we chose was right for US.
From the parenting end-my D is at a college across the country right now. She calls or texts daily, She has a full week off at Thanksgiving and will be home then, and again at winter break. She was invited to her roommate’s home for the fall break. But I DO miss her, and I would love it if she could come home more often. But her long-term plan doesn’t involve a local school, so I work with what we have. D’s thriving in her new setting. So far-no crisis, though a couple of sad calls home. My older D went to school an hour away from dad but far away from me. She didn’t call often, but only when she was homesick, sad about missing her boyfriend, or something else making her cry. Now THAT was hard on me.
As I said in my other post, if the finances penciled out, I could not see myself limiting any of my kids to a specific area. Not everyone is built to stick close to home, and some of these kids know it long before they start applying to college. We have some great, affordable in-state schools here in WA and D got to visit or even stay at many of them during high school. And she knew that they were not for her. She has two friends a lot like her who made similar decisions and are at similar colleges who are also thriving-just as the ones who wanted to go to our state flagship right here in her hometown. It’s their journey-not their parents’.
@sseamom Thank you! Those sad calls from faraway must be hard. I remember when I was away at college I would call my mother when I had my heart broken or when I was having a bad day and cry. Years later we talked about those calls. I told my mother that 10 minutes after we finished talking I would be feeling better and carrying on with life. Meanwhile after those calls, she would be upset for a week worrying about me. It’s hard, but I can see the benefits of letting your kids go where they want without restrictions. We’ll see when the times comes if I’m able to do it
It takes about the same amount of time to get home as bordering states, just take a plane rather than a car. And the phone works (when they answer it).
I told my kids if they went to the local college I didn’t want to see more than once a month (neither went that close). College is a time to grow on your own IMO.
We had one kid who was in college about a two hour drive away. We had one who was 3000 miles away. We actually saw the far away kid for more total days than the one a two hour drive away. To be honest…that 2 hour drive was a 6 hour fiasco, especially at school breaks and holidays. It took the 3000 mile away kid about the same amount of time to get home as the 2 hour drive away kid.
And really…neither would have come home on weekends anyway. They were very invested in their college campuses, and both had jobs there on weekends as well.
Sure…it was a long way away for the 3000 mile away kid. But you know what? She lived her college, and really thrived there. School gave her the opportunities she wanted, and she met awesome friends as well. Could she have done the same closer to home? Sure…but she wanted to spread her wings and go someplace else.
We didn’t waste time taking her to see colleges close to home. First, she had seen a bunch with her brother. Second, we live in the middle of college go to country…plenty of colleges she had already seen for various things while in HS. She wanted to go far away. We really had not problem with that as a criteria for colleges as long as we had a relative or close friend within a reasonable drive of her college…and we did.
I find this like the private school v. public school discussion. In conversations, I found the parents are more into the prestige of it all sometime rather than what is right for the kid. It’s like they are so impressed with themselves that they could send their kids that far, and want to shame the parents that didn’t. Mine can go anywhere, but I am not sending them 3000 miles to make the point I can, I swear some parents do that. Stanford is down the street, if admitted, he is going (cause he wants to). They grow up, get married, settle somewhere, frankly, I hope then they aren’t too far away, but it’s their life that I am not paying for at that point.
"I find this like the private school v. public school discussion. In conversations, I found the parents are more into the prestige of it all sometime rather than what is right for the kid. It’s like they are so impressed with themselves that they could send their kids that far, and want to shame the parents that didn’t. Mine can go anywhere, but I am not sending them 3000 miles to make the point I can, I swear some parents do that. "
Really, isn’t that a bit judge-y? Can’t I do the same for those who wish to keep their kids at home? Overprotective parents, can’t cut the apron strings, yadda, yadda, yadda… I doubt many people send their kids across the country to impress anyone. I’ve never witnessed this but probably I’m not projecting into someone else’s college decision. Why limit schools to what is within an hour or two from home? Different strokes…
“Meanwhile after those calls, she would be upset for a week worrying about me”
Um, yeah. Loss of sleep here after each such call. And that’s even though I KNEW that kids call home when they’re down and just want a listening ear. There’s a whole blog post about it on a popular blog for parents of college kids. I read it and knew all about this phenomenon and still lost sleep, and probably will again. I didn’t call home much because it was hard to get time on the pay phone and it cost quarters I didn’t always have. But I’m sure those times I did call and complained kept my own mom up at night.
Can you add some parent choice schools to the list? Insist on casting a wide net? For one of our kids, a lot changed in a year.
Our kids each applied to one parent choice. neither one chose to attend that choice. To be honest, the application fee was a waste of money.