<p>My son is an hour and a half from home- VERY independant. Has car, etc. Involved in sports so we don't see him much in fall. </p>
<p>My D (senior this year) is looking at a school the same distance- 1 1/2 hours away. By then, she will have license (already has car). She is more of a homebody- more into her studies. She is planning to study bio/premed. </p>
<p>My concern is that she will be close enough to come home weekends. This may not give her the full "away from home" college experience. </p>
<p>What have you experienced? Is it a good thing to be 3-4 hours away?</p>
<p>Every child is different and if you D is happier coming home on weekends, why worry? If she is like most young adults you will probably see less and less of her as time goes on.</p>
<p>You could also plan some get-aways for you and others. Then you are not always there, either. There should not be an expectation that you sit around waiting for her to show up. </p>
<p>Personally I was happy when they were a little further away. S2 was 2 hrs and rarely came home except at normal breaks. Friend’s D was only 45 minutes away and was home all the time, doing laundry, seeing friends, clubbing and staying out. I would not have wanted that.</p>
<p>Both of mine are/were in school just 20 minutes down the road. Both live/lived on campus or away from the family home. I (and they) never felt it was an impediment to becoming an independent adult.</p>
<p>I am going to be going to school 20 minutes away from home. This means if I NEED to, I can come home. Or if an emergency comes up that I can’t handle myself, I don’t have to wait four hours for someone to get there for me. That doesn’t mean I have to come home every weekend. Your daughter will find things she wants to do on campus on the weekends instead of coming home. She may come home sometimes, but I doubt after a while she’ll still be coming home all the time.</p>
<p>I commuted my first two years and am still pretty well along into becoming an independent adult. I lived WITH MY PARENTS and I am still growing quite well. There is a lot more to independence than your address. She’ll be fine.</p>
<p>There are things you can do if it seems she is still too dependent on “home”–if she shows up with dirty laundry, let her do it herself. Encourage her to stay on campus and make new friends there (it’s possible her HS friends won’t be around anymore anyway.)</p>
<p>None of my kids have gone to school in town but I told them if they did, we would pretend they were away and not bug them or try to see them every weekend. Don’t think we would have had the problem of THEM trying to see us every weekend.</p>
<p>I told one we could drive around for 3 hours so he could pretend he was far away, but that didn’t go over so well. I am a little tired of the 3-4 hour commutes every time and wish the last one would stay in town! ;)</p>
<p>We’re looking at one school that is 1.5 miles away. It feels far enough to me. Close enough that one could catch a game or concert if a kid is there, but far enough that you have to make an effort.</p>
<p>OTOH places in the city seems way too close, even though on public transportation it takes about that long to get to Columbia from our house. (Much shorter drive though!) Our son doesn’t like NYC so he’s not looking there. </p>
<p>From what I’ve seen from my older son, my kids’ friends will be really scattered so there’s just not that much incentive to come home.</p>
<p>My son went to college 40 minutes from home. He was very independent and rarely came home on weekends. One year, he didn’t even come home over the summer! (He arranged to work on a research project on campus.) However, the close location was certainly convenient at times – particularly at the end of his senior year, when he moved himself out of the off-campus apartment complex that he had been living in for 2 years without any parental help at all. He simply borrowed my car and made three trips over there and back in the course of 2 days. He also liked being able to see the same doctors and dentist throughout the year.</p>
<p>I don’t think the experience of living so close to home hampered his development of independence. He is now at graduate school on the other side of the country, where he has been very much on his own for more than a year and has successfully handled some complex personal situations by himself during that time.</p>
<p>I think it would have been inappropriate to discourage my son from attending the college he wanted to attend just because it was less than an hour from home.</p>
<p>My daughter is considering a school that is four miles from home, and to make it worse, her dad is a professor there. She has made us promise that if she does attend there, we will not expect her to be home very often and in particular, that her dad will not just “accidentally” be walking by her dorm all of the time!</p>
<p>I don’t think I’m too worried that she won’t be independent. She already has a lot of activities and interests.</p>
<p>She is also considering a school that is half way across the continent, and hard to get to. To me, that seem like more of a hassle.</p>
<p>I have a nephew who went to a college in his home town. First year he “lived on campus”, but was home so much, the second year they didn’t bother. After graduating, he moved hundreds of miles away, and is doing fine.</p>
<p>I know many kids who go to the local UC. I think all of the them live or have lived on campus. If you ran into a parent they would say their kid never came home. In our community the university area is self-contained with everything one would need.
I have noticed that the kids who go to school 2 hours away tend to come home on the weekend more. I think in our town it might be a case of many local students attend the community college or the UC. The one’s at the state school 2 hours away tend to come home to hang out with friends not to be with their family.
My niece when she went to Berkeley made a deal with herself and her parents that she would not come home for a weekend for the first 2 months. She knew if she went home once she would find herself going home every weekend and not making friends or finding a social life on campus.
I also have a friend whose D was prone to horrible homesickness. She went to school two hours from home. Her Mom would drive down once a week to have lunch. It isn’t a solution for everyone but it worked for them.</p>
<p>Argh, I meant 1.5 hours not miles. 1.5 miles is too close in my book - though if I lived next door to the perfect fit, of course I’d let my kid go there.</p>
<p>I have a neighbor that lives in the dorms less than a mile from his home. His mom said she doesn’t see him often. Once a month he’ll bring some of his dorm friends to the house for a home-cooked meal.</p>
<p>I going to a college a 10 minute drive away from where I live. However, since I won’t be able to park there and will have to take the bus, it’s a little longer. </p>
<p>I’ll be living at home, so if you don’t want your kid to stay away, I would imagine farther is better than closer. However if I was an hour and a half away, living at the dorms, I don’t think I’d go home.</p>
<p>In Canada, many (most?) kids go to school in the city in which they live (e.g., Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, etc.). This is considered normal and it is unusual though not unheard of for kids to leave the province (they will for McGill). I know some who live at home. Neither going to school in the same city nor even living at home seems to have led to a nation with stunted development (or even just for those kids).</p>
<p>A number of my friends who are Harvard professors have kids who go to Harvard and a few who go to Tufts. It doesn’t seem to be a big issue. The kids get busy with work and activities.</p>
<p>I went to college about an hour from where I lived. I really liked it- it was close enough to come home for the random dinner, or to see my brothers high school concerts and stuff like that, but I wasn’t really home all that often, and since I was so close often didn’t stay overnight or for more than one night. My school was in the opposite direction from my parents commute though, which meant that they had to actively come down to see me which was good. Going to school in the city might have been too close even though it was the same distance wise.</p>