<p>Thanks so much for the additional responses! I need to take a little while to let all of this advice soak in and to research the schools a little bit more. I’ll get back to all of you soon!</p>
<p>If you lopped off New York City you could comfortably see most of these schools in a week. </p>
<p>DAY 1: Fly into Boston on a weekend, driving up to Brunswick, ME (Bowdoin) the day you arrive. Logan Airport-Brunswick in 2 hr, 21 min.</p>
<p>DAY 2: Visit Bowdoin. Drive Brunswick-Medford, MA (Tufts), 2 hr, 23 min.</p>
<p>Day 3: a.m., visit Tufts. Drive Medford-Boston, 20 minutes.<br>
p.m.: Visit Northeastern. Drive to western suburbs.</p>
<p>Day 4: a.m. Visit Brandeis. Drive Waltham-Providence, 1 hr.
p.m. Visit Brown. Drive Providence-New Haven, 1 hr, 51 min.</p>
<p>Day 5: a.m. Visit Yale. Drive new Haven-Middletown, CT, 40 minutes.
p.m. Visit Wesleyan. Drive Middletown-Amherst, 1 hr, 15 min</p>
<p>Day 6: a.m. Visit Amherst.<br>
p.m. Return to Boston, 1 hr, 58 min </p>
<p>This would be a bit of a whirlwind tour, doing 2 colleges a day for several days straight, but it’s doable. I’ve done similar trips with my Ds, and it works, especially in the summer when you’re not going to be able to sit in on classes and such anyway. You’ll get a campus tour, possibly an info session, maybe an hour or two hanging out time on & around each campus. You’d need to build in some extra cushion on travel times because traffic can be horrendous, but if traffic is OK these schools are actually quite close together, so long as you take them in a logical order. But I wouldn’t count on a lot of sightseeing. You might schedule your flight into Boston to do a day of sightseeing there. You can take a short drive out of Brunswick to see some pretty stretches of the Maine coast. You could stop at Mystic Seaport for a short visit on the drive between Providence and New Haven. Small stuff like that. I wouldn’t try to add the Cape.</p>
<p>Adding NYC to this itinerary adds an entirely different dimension of complexity to the trip. In principle it’s only about 90 minutes from NYC to New Haven, but it can easily take 3 hours. You absolutely don’t want a car in Manhattan, but it’s not really possible to see Fordham in the Bronx without one. And so on. I guess if I absolutely wanted to visit Columbia and NYU, I’d start downtown at NYU on foot, take the subway up to Columbia, and see if I could rent a car on the Upper West Side, catching a quick look at Fordham on my way out of the city towards New Haven. But then it’s a long slog back to NYC from the outer reaches of your trip. So guess I’d hold that for a separate adventure.</p>
<p>But you can still see Central Park, walk around Times Square, take the ferry. The Circle Line is probably running. So what if you are surrounded by tourists?</p>
<p>If someone is planning a whirlwind tour of multiple colleges, I’d suggest putting the colleges they are least interested in at the end, or colleges that are closest to home at the end. That way, if you get exhausted or behind schedule, it is easy to cut off the end of the tour.</p>
<p>Also, most colleges don’t offer tours on Sunday, so you might set that up for your longest driving day.</p>
<p>A few comments …</p>
<ul>
<li>Doing a couple college tours a day is certainly doable … tiring but doable</li>
<li>Both my kids and I agreed when pressed for time dumping the info session was fine … they tended to be of little value added for the time they take</li>
<li>In addition to two formal tours a couple drive-bye can also be squeesed in if they are real close by</li>
<li>I’d suggest taking pictures as well as taking notes … the schools will start to mesh together … one or two picture will help keep them straight when you get home</li>
<li><p>A GPS is your friend if you will be driving</p></li>
<li><p>And the big one … adding sight seeing will be fun but definately cut into the number of schools you can visit.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>You can see Fordham without a car. You can take the subway or the commuter rail. </p>
<p>I think you need to seriously consider what your safety schools are. If your state university is your safety, and you are perfectly happy attending that school if you don’t get in anywhere else (or can’t afford anywhere else), then it’s OK to focus on reaches on this trip. But if you are determined to attend school in the Northeast and would attend a school that is not a reach school, then you need to rethink this trip and devote more time to matches and safety schools. </p>
<p>The Cape is lovely, but it is really out of your way and the traffic in the summer can be horrible, both getting onto the Cape and once you are there. Unless you want to spend a couple days there relaxing, I’d definitely skip it.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses! I thought over all of your comments, as well as my family’s thoughts and have decided upon this as the general trip itinerary:</p>
<p>July 4th- fly into Boston, arriving at 11am, drive up to Salem/Marblehead, then drive up Highway 1 to Brunswick, ME (stopping along the way to see lighthouses and other sites), watch fireworks off coast of Atlantic Ocean near Brunswick, stay at B&B near Brunswick</p>
<p>July 5th- Bowdoin interview/tour/info session, drive to Boston suburbs, Brandeis tour, something else fun before bed, stay at hotel in suburbs</p>
<p>July 6th- Tufts info session/tour, drive to Amherst along Mohawk Trail, Amherst info session/tour, something fun around Northampton/Springfield, stay at hotel, drive to Hartford, stay at hotel in Hartford</p>
<p>July 7th- Wesleyan tour/info session/interview, Yale self-guided tour, Connecticut College self-guided tour, drive to Providence, see sites in Providence, stay at hotel in Providence</p>
<p>July 8th- Brown info session/tour, RISD art museum, Martha’s Vineyard, stay at B&B somewhere along coast but hopefully away from the most congested area</p>
<p>July 9th- Visit Plymouth, ferry to Provincetown, visit Cape Cod Seashore, drive to Boston, stay at hotel in Boston</p>
<p>July 10th- see sites in Boston, go to Red Sox game, stay at hotel in Boston</p>
<p>July 11th- Northeastern tour/info session, Boston University self-guided tour, flight back to WI in afternoon</p>
<p>Does this sound more realistic? We’ll hold off on the NYC schools until either Christmas or next April. Any more recommendations? Thanks so much for all of your help!</p>
<p>Just a few things—On the 6th stay closer to Middletown so you have an easier time getting to Wesleyan the next morning and avoid Hartford traffic. Also, it’s ambitious to do Brown, RISD and Martha’s Vineyard. It’s a project to get from Providence to the Vineyard and near impossible to get your car on a ferry (they fill months in advance). Better to just go straight to Plymouth. That’s not a bad drive from Providence and doesn’t involve either of the bridges to the Cape which can get very slow in the summer. It will be difficult to do Plymouth, take the ferry to P-town and go to the beach all in one day. Plus, that’s a Saturday and the Cape traffic will be awful. Either Plymouth or P-town on their own would probably be a better bet.
We are doing a similar tour later in July - Bowdoin, Colby, Dartmouth, Amherst, Yale, Brown with interviews at Bowdoin, Colby and Yale. We only have one day when we see two schools (Amherst/Yale). We are originally from the area though, so no sightseeing on this trip.
Good luck!</p>
<p>Hi-</p>
<p>Your plan is coming together! It is wonderful that you are putting so much great effort into planning this trip! I live on Cape Cod in the summer so I am very familiar with the Plymouth/Islands/Cape area.There are a few things that you really need to consider:</p>
<p>July 8th: You can do Martha’s Vineyard as a full day trip but you will not be able to to do the other things that you have planned. It is a trip that needs the full day if you are not going to spend the night on the Vineyard. There are ferry schedules to consider and most folks do not bring their car as the room is limited. You would be better served to go to Brown in the AM and then go down to Newport, RI for the afternoon then head over to Plymouth from Newport. Take a look on line at Newport, RI - we always take our out of town visitors to Newport for a day trip - it is spectacular and you can easily fill an afternoon and evening in Newport and feel that you have a feel for the place and that you did not spend your entire time in traffic.</p>
<p>July 9th: You will be in Plymouth on this day. There is a seasonal ferry from Plymouth to P-town but this too is an all day trip. I do not think this is the best use of your time on this particular trip. Also, please consider that this is a Saturday - one of the worst days during the season to be travelling to or from or on Cape Cod - it is change over day for rentals so the roads are very congested.</p>
<p>Is seeing Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, or Plymouth a must for you or your family? My concern about these areas on this particular week is that these places will be very, very crowded. It is a holiday week with July 4th happening at the start of the week. That will make this an extra congested time during the summer season.</p>
<p>I think this is much too ambitious.</p>
<p>Bowdoin and Brandeis in one day, Tufts and Amherst in one day is unrealistic. Expecting to do tours/info sessions, to really get to SEE the campuses, and then add a two-hour drive in between is crazy. And that’s assuming no traffic! Go online and look at the times of info sessions. Often they are at 10 am and 1 pm. No time to do a two-hour drive in between. Are you planning on skipping lunch, too? (If you are thinking you can beat the Google maps time, don’t assume that.)</p>
<p>Doing Brown, RISD museum – and then expecting to get to Martha’s Vineyard – in one day is also unrealistic. Why are you going to the RISD museum? You are interested in Brown – spend time there. </p>
<p>You really need to think about this trip. Is this a vacation, or a college-visiting trip? What is your priority? When we visited schools with our daughter, our goal was for her to understand the schools, to get a sense of what it was like to be a student there, to gather material to use in her application essays. We went to the bookstore and the library, walked around the town, ate in the cafeteria, etc. If your parents want a New England vacation, they need to do that after you get into one of these schools and you are living there.</p>
<p>When you are coming through Hartford, get off the highway and do a Trinity College drive by. If you have enough time, park and walk through the campus. </p>
<p>I’m going to suggest staying in Wethersfield/Rocky Hill, south of Hartford, north of Middletown, easy on/off I-91. You want something on Rt.99 Silas Deane Highway. As an alternative, cross the river on Rt. 3 and stay in Glastonbury near Somerset Square. There are two fairly new hotels right there.</p>
<p>If you stay in Glastonbury, either cross back to 91 in the morning and drive to Wesleyan, or go down through <em>South</em> Glastonbury and take the nation’s oldest continuously operating ferry across to Rocky Hill and back to 91 (4-minute crossing, under $5 really cool trip). I do not recommend <em>this summer</em> attempting to cross the river in Portland as that bridge is under reconstruction.</p>
<p>Looking at your Providence - Vineyard - Cape Cod plan, it looks much too ambitious. Too much driving – the Cape is hours long and not pretty driving. Sub in Newport with some beach time and mansion tours and cute seaport shopping and dining.</p>
<p>Hi OP:</p>
<p>I agree completely with fireandrain, post #50</p>
<p>As I said earlier, this is way too ambitious. Cut out most of the vacation part. Your itinerary is so packed. You have to allow time for unplanned things to occur. What if you are so enamored with a school and want to spend a few extra hours? With your schedule, you won’t be able to.</p>
<p>Is this a college tour or a family vacation? Hard to fit in that much of both in just a week to 10 days. Personally, I would rethink this schedule. We planned on one day for each school, not only to really visit each campus, but to get familiar with the town/city around it too. That could be the “vacation” part built in.</p>
<p>Don’t forget, Fordham has a campus in the city, right by Lincoln Center, a few subway stops from NYU. So if you decide you don’t have time to go the the Bronx and see their main campus, you can at least visit their Lincoln Center campus. Smaller, different, but it’s still the same school.</p>
<p>Hey, bbarty, good work, but I agree with everyone else. I know New England looks small from our perspective, but the driving takes a long time. Think of the “short” road trips you’re talking about like driving through Chicago at rush hour, or trying to get from Milwaukee to Twin Cities - the distance in NE is shorter, but the drive/ferry/waiting in line/traffic all add up to a ton of traveling. To go to the Cape or Islands from anywhere does take all day.</p>
<p>And please - only do 2 schools in one day if they are in the same city. You can barely make it even with that distance. Give it a chance to breathe. My D and I did have one day where we had one info session - no tour, because it was raining and she was turned off by the info session - and then could do drive-throughs of 3 other schools, but they were literally all 20 minutes apart and we knew we were only glancing at the campuses for future reference.</p>
<p>Change your vacation plans to the really cool places that are truly near where the schools are - like a town on the Maine coast (Ogunquit, perhaps, or Freeport, home of LL Bean), or Gloucester/Cape Ann (which does have an AMAZING public beach named Wingaersheek). There are wonderful places along the southern MA coast, including Horseneck Beach near New Bedford (awesome body surfing!), quaint towns like Marion, Mass, plus all of the RI spots, Mystic, CT, etc. Or just enjoy Boston - so many historic and fun sights in and around there. If people want to be on a boat, take a Boston harbor cruise!</p>
<p>I think common wisdom after a day of college tours is to do something relaxing and refreshing, but not “work” to accomplish. Keep it close - you’ll have no problem with that!</p>
<p>If you are looking for something interesting to do in Boston, I highly recommend Urban Interactive tours. They have several tours to offer, but the one my family did was in and around Boston Common. You are given an iPhone and are sent out on an “Amazing Race” type course with challenges and puzzles throughout. If I recall correctly, it took 2-3 hours.</p>
<p>As others have said, your proposed itinerary is too ambitious. The following revised itinerary should be feasible:</p>
<p>Monday, July 4th- fly into Boston, arriving at 11am. Skip Salem/Marblehead. Drive up I-95 and I-295 to Freeport, ME. If you still have time and energy, you can get off I-295 at Freeport and wander along the coast to Brunswick, ME. Otherwise stay on I-295 all the way to the Brunswick exit. Stay at B&B in Brunswick and watch fireworks.</p>
<p>Tuesday, July 5th- Bowdoin interview/tour/info session, drive to Boston suburbs, stay at hotel in suburbs.</p>
<p>Wednesday, July 6th- Tufts info session/tour and Brandeis info session/tour. You can visit these two in one day because they are close together. Drive to Amherst, MA, and stay in a hotel there.</p>
<p>Thursday, July 7th- Amherst tour/info session. Drive to Middletown, CT.</p>
<p>Friday, July 8th- Wesleyan tour/info session/interview. Afternoon, if you have time and energy, choose either a Yale self-guided tour or a Connecticut College self-guided tour. In the evening drive to Providence and stay at hotel there.</p>
<p>Saturday, July 9th- Brown self-guided tour. (They have no tours on summer weekends.) Drive to Boston and stay at hotel there. (Warning: Boston hotels are expensive!)</p>
<p>Sunday, July 10th- Boston University self-guided tour, sightsee in Boston, go to Red Sox game, stay at hotel in Boston. (Warning: The Red Sox vs Orioles game may be sold out!)</p>
<p>July 11th- Northeastern tour/info session, flight back to WI in afternoon.</p>
<p>There’s so much advice in this thread that it makes my head whirl, but I’ll add a couple of things.</p>
<p>We never did more than one college per day: tour, info session, and S attended a class. The latter might not be available in the summer, of course. Drive-bys are fine before you are seriously looking at schools. If I were you I wouldn’t bother with a drive-by unless it was right on the way and took no time at all. I would forget about Cape Cod this trip. A traffic nightmare. If you want to go to the beach, Newport has great ones. I would also forget about Bayport. The time it would take isn’t worth it.</p>
<p>If your family is interested in history, consider taking a day or half day to visit Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts (near Amherst and Wesleyan), Mystic Seaport in New London, CT (between Yale and Brown), or Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH (between Boston and Bowdoin). All three are great. (I’m particularly fond of Strawbery Banke.)</p>
<p>If you go to Bowdoin, you can see some great Maine coast scenery very easily by driving out to the Harpswell/Bailey’s Island/Orr’s Island area that is literally adjacent to Brunswick. There’s a lobster pound out there somewhere where you can have dinner, or drive down to South Freeport Village and go to the Harraseeket Lobster Pound (note that this is NOT the same as the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, although that is also a nice place).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We visited both Fordham campuses and they are totally different. The Lincoln Center campus (which we did not like) focuses more on the performing arts. If you plan to major in something else, I would visit the main campus in the Bronx (we loved it).</p>
<p>“You can drive up to Fordham’s campus in the Bronx, but you are going to have to get out of the car to really see it, since it’s sort of walled-off from the street. If Fordham is a possible safety, I really encourage you to do that. The Fordham neighborhood is really vibrant. While you are there, check out the Arthur Avenue market, a great old-fashioned Italian market area a couple of blocks south of the campus, and maybe peek at the NY Botanical Garden adjacent to the campus.” - Exactly… </p>
<p>You need to walk on the Fordham campus, drive through the Botanical Gardens (across the street) because that is where you will run for excercise or walk with your friends to “get out of the city” in 5 minutes. Arthur Ave is a must!. Every Fordham student goes there to eat and shop for necessities. The Italians in the neighborhood love the Fordham students - there is a very long relationship there.</p>
<p>I agree that two colleges in one day will only work if they are within an hour of each other. Mostly though my kids only had the energy for one. No way you can get to Martha’s Vineyard without spending a whole day at it. If you must go to the Cape stay on the mainland.</p>