My daughter has been accepted into Duke. The dorm check in date for entering freshmen is Aug. 23. We need to drop her off a couple of days early because we need to be back in town (several states away) to get her younger sister enrolled in her school. Does anyone know if Duke allows students to check into their dorms a couple of days early?
I would check with the housing office.
Congrats to your daughter! I agree that the housing office is a good place to start.
Look into the pre-orientation programs at Duke. Students usually get to campus a week or so earlier for those. https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/new-students/preorientation-programs
Who is “we” and can “we” split up and do both jobs solo?
Or do you mean the younger sister will come to move in then you, alone, will get her settled back at home?
No. She won’t be able to check into her dorm early. Even if she gets accepted to a preorientation program ( and many people don’t get accepted…it’s a lottery) the PreO program is housed in different dorms than the ones she,will live in as a freshman. She would move out of that and into her actual dorm in the move in day. We face the exact same issue and we had our younger daughter stay at a classmates home while we were gone.
If there are two parents in the family, this may be a time when “divide and conquer” is the optimal strategy.
It strikes me that actually calling and asking Duke would get you better info than asking on a forum.
At my school, students where allowed to move in a couple of days early (for a fee) for a variety of reasons. It doesn’t hurt to contact the Housing Office at Duke to see if there are any options available. I would expect them to be much more helpful than a random forum. It’s better to ask earlier, rather than later, so that you can figure out a different plan, if moving in early is not possible.
It’s been two years since my daughter moved in as a Duke freshman. They absolutely did not allow early move in then but you could check. Maybe things have changed??
There’s a (not university run) service at Cornell that allows you to ship your stuff to them, and then its delivered to your dorm room. Perhaps Duke has something similar?
My husband moved the older 2 kids in without me because of the youngest’s schedule. I figured he would be better at moving the boxes and helping them set up their computers! Older kids were both within driving distance; we both flew with the youngest when she went off to college.
Well, yes, in a lot of families for the computers. But before deciding which parent does college drop-off duty while the other one is dealing with the sibling’s needs, check to see whether the college provides helpers for freshman move-in. Many do, especially those where all the freshmen move in on the same day.
The savvy mom may want to volunteer for drop-off duty and ask Dad to do the end-of-the-year pickup, when there isn’t a helper to be found.
Sometimes the college drop off is not the Hallmark Cards moment we think it might be. It is not two parents waving goodbye as the student goes in the dorm door surrounded by new friends. My kids only have one parent, so already we kill the perfect send off. I have two, their schools are 2000 miles apart, so sometimes something has to give.
When I took DD2, there was a mix up for the dorm assignment and it took all day to move in. The ‘helpers’ were long gone, so we lugged the stuff up ourselves. For DD1, she did pay for the freshman biking trip and got to move in 3 days early, so again no helpers. She was not feeling well so we just dumped all the stuff in the room, made the bed and she got in it to sleep for a few hours before a meeting. I went home without all the long goodbyes and warm fuzzies.
Don’t build the send off as the most important thing as you might be disappointed if it doesn’t work out.
^^ Freshman move-in at Duke is a very highly regimented affair. You wait in an endless line of cars directed by a few dozen police. After an hour or two you pull up directly in front of your student’s dorm. The driver remains in the car and a swarm of college helpers strip your car bare in seconds, like army ants on a dead wildebeast in the African savannah.
They then snag your student and all their stuff gets magically transported up to their room in about 2 minutes flat. Meanwhile the driver of the vehicle drives about 45 miles offsite (ok just kidding, about 20 minutes), parks in a humongous parking lot, and takes a shuttle back to the dorm area.
After unpacking you’ll be ready for lunch, so you’ll walk over to the one and only dining hall for freshmen whereupon you’ll realize that it closed at 2pm and there’s nowhere to eat. So packing some food might be a good idea.
Written only partially tongue-in-cheek (but I’m serious about the food)! Have fun and congrats Duke parents!
This is why your kid should go to Cornell instead of Duke. The freshman move-in process is identical except that there’s food everywhere. Dining halls, snack bars, convenience stores, food trucks. The campus is an ode to calories, yet strangely, my daughter lost 10 pounds her first semester, presumably from all the walking.
Duke has approximately 35 restaurants on campus. There is no dearth of options. It’s just a question of which campus you’re on.