<p>Already consider the costs of getting to and from Vanderbilt from the west coast. I am wondering if most students parents come to parents weekend? I can see how the air travel budget could add up quickly.</p>
<p>As a parent of a Class of 2017 student from California, we’ll be going to Parent’s Weekend this year. It doesn’t look like our son will be able to come home during the fall semester due to his band commitments and the amount of time it takes to get from where we live to Nashville and back (it’s a full day’s travel each way). It will give us the opportunity to check in with him.</p>
<p>When we met with the Band Director, he talked about the fun things they do with parent’s that weekend. I wouldn’t want to miss it. </p>
<p>For each student, it will be different.</p>
<p>“Most” would be a stretch, but a lot of parents make the trip. </p>
<p>There’s one every year. Plus if son/daughter joins a Greek house, they usually have an additional parents weekend. Visiting campus one a year may be a lot, but I would plan to visit at least twice in their time here. Book early to save on fees, the hotels fill up quickly.</p>
<p>My parents moved me in, and they stayed from 3 days before move-in to a day after, so they got the full Vandy and Nashville experience. We found parent’s weekend awkwardly close to move-in, and I’m not the home sick type, so we decided against the visit. I moved in alone Sophomore year, and did not go home for Fall or Spring break, so they visited over my fraternity’s parents weekend.</p>
<p>Many parents do go from out of state, but it’s really up to you. Most of my D’s parents went the first year, and they came from all over the country. (In fact, none of her friends are from Tennessee.) If I were you, I would plan to go the first year. If your S or D joins a fraternity or sorority, they have parent’s weekends, too, in the spring. Those are fun–more fun, I think, than the big, all-school parents’ weekend.</p>
<p>I thought we would go but we did not. Our son came home the weekend before for the 4 day fall break. It seemed silly and expensive for us to travel down there, and we had just been there less than 2 months prior dropping him off. I don’t think it upset our son that we did not go.</p>
<p>We did not go to either of the Family Weekends for the last 2 years (D is a sophomore) but we did fly her home for the fall break weekend not long after Family Weekend. I don’t think she felt left out and understood that it didn’t make sense since we had just dropped her off the month before at the start of school and that we would be seeing her a few weeks later for fall break. And I say this as the former student organizer of Vanderbilt’s Parents Weekend a long time ago 
back when they had the weekend in the spring, which seemed to make more sense.</p>