I’m new to this site…from CA and I’ve never been to the east coast but Im going on a college trip over spring break. I realize this is a really selective list of colleges (since many of my safety schools are in CA where I live but I’m hoping to visit:
-brown
-harvard
-BU
-tufts
-Haverford
-Princeton
-dartmouth
-yale
-duke
the colleges at the top of the list are more of a priority for me.
I have about 7-10 days to visit over spring break. Any help on what order or where I could take the amtrak would be greatly appreciated. thanks guys!
In the Boston area you have harvard, bu, tufts. Brown and yale are both along the coast heading south. Haverford is right outside philly and princeton is maybe 75 minutes north of haverford. Duke is in NC and you would spend one full day each way just driving. Similarly Dartmouth is a good few hours out of Boston. Look at what time of day each school has tours. We visited brown and amherst in the same day but one tour ended at 11:00 and the afternoon tour started at 1:00 and I remember driving like a madman to get to amherst by 1:00. I’d say you have 3 or 4 days in Boston and 2 around Philly. Haverford is very small, if you are going there consider Swarthmore which is a better school right down the road, east coast near nyc and Boston can get congested, distances are deceptive. If you are intent on visiting Dartmouth you can also visit Middlebury which is not very far. We did bowdoin, Dartmouth and middlebury in a day and a half.
Just a note: Amtrak has a special deal for a student visiting colleges with a parent, discounting one of the fares 50%. Check their website for details (and some blackout dates).
Fly into Boston and plan to spend a few days touring Harvard, Tufts, BU and any other schools that might catch your eye. Boston is a great college town. Then, take Amtrak to Providence, stop and see Brown, continue on Amtrak and see Yale,continuing on to Princeton and Philadelphia. Alternatively you could rent a car and do Brown, Yale, Princeton, and the Philadephia area schools. Duke and Dartmouth are on the far reaches of possibility for this trip.
There is Amtrak service to Dartmouth, but then have to get from the station to the school. There is also bus service, but that would definitely take an entire day.
The challenge is that most schools have a morning and afternoon official info session. So you need to be in one location for the 9 or 10 am session and then hurry to the next for the 1 pm session. Trains can also be late, which can create challenges. A few days in the Boston area, (can see Harvard and BU in one day, Tufts the next (or vice versa). But probably could not get to Brown on the same day. Brown next day. Yale next. Princeton day 5. Then Philadelphia. Maybe substitute U Penn for Dartmouth.
Perhaps could fly into Dartmouth and then make your way south.
The only way to add Duke in is likely to fly from Philadelphia to Duke and then home to CA from there. Otherwise, you will likely run out of time.
Flying into Hanover, NH would typically entail access to either a private jet or a crop duster, and I think it will be a little early for planting season on what passes for agricultural land up there.
I would fly into Boston, see the Boston area schools and Dartmouth. By FAR the best way to get to Dartmouth is via the Dartmouth Coach, which will deposit you right in the center of campus. Then travel down the coast by Amtrak as suggested above: Brown, Yale, Princeton, then Haverford and/or Swarthmore and/or Penn.
In general, I think you ought to devote an entire day to each school: do the info session, the tour, sit in on a class, eat lunch at an on-campus spot and get a feel for things, if possible. Travel to the next school that evening, so you can comfortably do the morning info session and tour. If the school doesn’t allow you to attend a class, or isn’t in session when you are there, that would make a shorter visit reasonable and allow you to knock off two Boston area schools in one day.
I had the impression that the student in travelling alone. I don’t think that negotiating Boston traffic and parking is a good idea for anyone who isn’t accustomed to it, let alone a 17 yr old, who wouldn’t be able to rent a car anyway.
Dartmouth isn’t actually that far from anywhere. It just seems like it because it’s not as close as some other places. It’s a two hour drive from Boston, and about three hours from Yale or Brown. The only real “problem” is that from Boston it’s in the opposite direction from Brown, so there’s probably going to be some sort of backtracking, but the actual distances/times aren’t so significant. (That assumes a rental car. I agree that using public transportation probably makes Dartmouth tough to work into this trip, especially since everything else except Duke is really convenient to Amtrak.)
The real question is which schools you can see in one day, other than the schools in Boston (where it will be easy to see any two in one day). Dartmouth / Yale / Brown / Princeton are just far enough apart (and, except for Dartmouth, sprawly enough so that it takes a little longer to see what you want to see), that it would be hard to double up any two of them. But you could double BU and Brown with a little planning, even travelling by train not car. And you could probably double Princeton and Haverford. As far as seeing things is concerned, 45 minutes is plenty to see everything there is to see at Haverford, which is really small. You may want to spend more time talking/listening to people there, but you don’t have to walk far to see it.
Again, it would be much easier to do this with a car. If you aren’t driving during rush hour, Princeton and Haverford are about 45 minutes apart by car. By train it will be 2-4 hours on 3-4 trains, depending on how the schedules work. You take the Princeton “Dinky” to Princeton Junction, and from there either Amtrak to Philadelphia or NJ Transit to Trenton and SEPTA from Trenton to Philadelphia (much cheaper, much slower). Then SEPTA from Philadelphia to Haverford – the station is a few hundred feet from the college.
If you wanted to definitely see Dartmouth than flying into Burlington Vt airport is only about an 1 1/2 drive to Dartmouth
As previous poster stated you could stop at Middlebury on the way. In fact we just did the opposite this weekend,drove to Dartmouth from NJ, visited our older son at Midd but stayed over a few nights in Burlington
Good luck
We toured Boston, NY, and Philadelphia in one trip using Amtrak and public transportation (the T in Boston, SEPTA in Philly, etc.) I think you get more out of a visit if you can spend one day at each college, but if that’s not possible (wasn’t for us) then try to at least spend a half-day at each, taking a tour, talking to students, sitting in on a class, etc. Being on a campus for an hour or less really isn’t worth the hassle, in my opinion. It just doesn’t give you much information, even if the campus itself isn’t large.
The Dartmouth Coach leaves every 2 hours from Logan Airport and South Station–the Amtrak station in Boston–and goes directly to the Dartmouth Green, steps away from Collis, McNutt, and the Hop. Much easier than driving, doesn’t take appreciably more time. The OP could fly into Logan in the AM, take the coach to Hanover, spend the afternoon and evening at D, and either return late or stay overnight and return the first thing in the morning.