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<p>He asked. Answered on the far otherside of the answer spectrum. Here is to hoping he never encounters poor weather or a disgruntled student on a day of mac & cheese.</p>
<p>Minor tips from our whirlwind tours last year: stock up on drinks/snacks from grocery store & keep in the car for fuel – it will save $ & keep you going thru those interminable drives (& keep crankiness from rearing its head). It was important to keep the driver (me) and the teen well-hydrated & well-fed. </p>
<p>If you son can bring a pillow on his plane trip, that would be great & he can catch some shut-eye on the long rides. I found exhaustion would completely color my son’s view of a campus (if tired – it didn’t look good, tho it seemed perfectly fine to me).</p>
<p>I think the trip is doable as long as the student and parent are up for the adventure … and the parent is willing to let the studentguide the trip. My oldest and I did a Boston to DC and back trip in 5 1/2 days which was more like 100-125 miles a day but also included at least 2 schools a day … and it was quite doable. I’m a big believer in visits … for my daughter it not only helped her with specific schools … more importantly, to me at least, it solidified the attributes of schools to which she was most drawn. Are there lots of schools at which she would do fine … sure … but I also believe there are schools within that set which are better fits … and the visits help her understand which schools they might be. While I think visits before applying are a nice to have … I think they are especially important for kids thinking about applying ED. After our visits my daughters changed her list … changed her #1 choice (to a school she applied ED) … dropped some schools that were on her list before the visits … added schools that were not … and greatly changed the order. Overall a very valuable experience.</p>
<p>We always bring a small nylon cooler which we stock with food and drinks. Freezer packs or water bottles can be frozen at the hotel.</p>
<p>We did some less hectic college visits back East this summer. I think 2 schools in one day are doable if there is not a lot of travel. We did a day at Northeastern in Boston (we had to drive in from Cape Cod, see the Wednesday Engineering day presentation and tour). Then we stayed overnight and did the morning at MIT and the afternoon at Tufts. Even though my son really disliked Tufts (too much loosey goosey liberal arts for him), it was a really valuable visit. Truly I think learing about dislikes was very important in understanding priorities.</p>
<p>Then next week we visited RPI and were very impressed. It has changed a lot since my husband took classes there in the 1970s. More collaborative (less cut-throat) now. In July the campus was very pretty. It seems they have decent merit scholarships too.</p>
<p>WPI offered my son $15,000 and RPI offered him $10,000 in merit several years ago, but I’ve known others who got the better deal from RPI (and bigger offers), so you never know.</p>
<p>Regarding speed on I95, there’s two - - - 70+ and stopped. </p>
<p>Just because the maps says its 200 miles from Boston to NY doesn’t mean you can make it in 3 hours. It might take you an hour or more to go the 30 miles from Bridgeport to Stamford. A more important question than; how far is it? would be; what time are you going?</p>
<p>If you have time, WPI would be a good choice too.</p>
<p>agree with OSDad. It can take 30 minutes to get from the MIT campus on to the Mass Pike (and I’ve done the drive a hundred times and know every single short cut or way to back into the parking lot of Whole Foods on Memorial Drive to make a U-turn) even though it’s about a 2 mile drive. It can take an hour to go from Stamford to New Rochelle on 95 (about 20 mile distance). And worse yet- it can take an hour to drive the final 5 miles to LGA depending on the time of day, which truck has lost its cargo, etc.</p>
<p>I loved visiting campuses and insisted on doing a lot. After my marathon trips I can distill our experience down into a couple of tips-</p>
<p>1- Don’t push it. Too much driving and too few campuses makes for a kid who decides that some very fantastic schools which would fit like a glove are just not right. I tried to cover too much distance in too little time; my kids needed to steep like a tea bag to really understand a place (except for the few, visceral, “get me outta here” schools.)</p>
<p>2- Visiting is hugely important for match and safety’s- less so for reaches. If your kid gets into a reach you’ll have time to visit; if not, it sets the internal meter in an unrealistic place. Plus there’s a reason why 20,000 other kids are applying to that same school with teensy admissions rates-- the more realistic choices look a lot less shiny after visiting the tippy top schools.</p>
<p>3- The little things really tip the balance- the parking ticket, the hotel which lost the reservation, the admissions office which thought you were coming the day before and has no spot for you in the presentation today, etc. The more schools you try to cram in, the greater the likelihood that Murphy’s Law will kick in and the screw ups will start to pile on. My kid hated the school where we got the parking ticket (the whole day had been great, stars in the eyes, etc. But once we got back to the car, I could see that my anger and irritation was starting to leach into my kid.) So if I had to do it all over again, I’d have built in enough flex time at each school so that the inevitable traffic tie ups, delays, or mishaps didn’t make us all stressed out, rushed, and irritable.</p>
<p>Net- it’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you drop even one school from your trip you’ll both have a more productive visit.</p>
<p>Ditto blossom’s advice – my tiredness and/or irritation (e.g. at admissions receptionist who ignored us then spoke brusquely after we drove 70 mph for 2 hrs to make ‘second school in one day’ visit) definitely flowed onto son. If you want son to like the school – leave some extra time for that one!</p>
<p>
In general, my gut would agree with you but one of D’s matches beat H and was more or less tied with Y…it was very unnerving, actually. The admissions departments of H & Y both saved her the trouble of agonizing so that Match was the school she attended.</p>
<p>Three hours from Boston to NYC? No can do. It’s more like 4 to 4.5 hours, that is if there is no jam. I95 is full of trucks. Going on the Mass Pile then 84 through CT is the preferred route, but watch out for CT cops. They’ll make you stick to the speed limit. When we traveled through CT recently, there was police car that was weaving from right to left and left to right for nearly a half hour. His driving theatrics slowed traffic down to a crawl.</p>
<p>Another possibility is coming across on the ferry and traveling west to LGA. It is a bit out of the way, but avoids so much traffic that it might be time effective.</p>
<p>The Ferry leaves Bridgeport, crosses LI Sound and docks in Port Jefferson. We do Boston to PJ in three hours. An hour to LGA is a bit tight, but one and a half hours is easily doable in most traffic conditions.</p>
<p>Marite, I have to ask if “Mass Pile” was a typo or a Freudian slip! :)</p>
<p>Both, don’t you think? 
It’s happened to us more times than I want to remember.</p>
<p>The fastest I’ve done the Cambridge to NY (suburbs not city) trip was 3.5 hours on a Sunday night. I’d allow 5 hours - maybe a bit more if you are going to LGA.</p>
<p>I think I’d do the driving almost exactly reversed from what you have (starting in Albany), make JHU the last school, and fly out of Baltimore instead of LGA if you must fly into LGA.</p>
<p>Great driving tips. Thanks everyone. I’m going to look into flying from BOS to LGA and avoid the Mass Pile.</p>
<p>owlice: unfortunately the tickets are bought already in/out of LGA. Part of the reason for the loop direction is so that on sunday, when there are no tours at schools, we can be at RPI where we know a student to show us around. We could hit CMU on sunday coming counterclockwise but we’d be on our own there. Also, partly what was discussed above, which is to save MIT/one of the dream school for last to avoid making others look not so pretty in comparison.</p>
<p>We do have all day tuesday to get to LGA, so maybe we’ll leave by mid morning and leave plenty of time. Or fly out if we can work that.</p>
<p>Blossom: advice taken. Need to be at MIT to meet with a coach though. Just don’t know how we can cut down on the driving given the thoughtlessness of the founders on situating the schools where they did. As long as he knows what’s coming, DS is pretty good about going with the flow. He doesn’t like surprises.</p>
<p>To piggy-back the topic of the thread:
Any route advice for driving from CT to the (northwest) Philadelphia area on a Friday morning? Trying to make Villanova by 10:30am. The direct route on Google Maps shows 186 miles in 3:15; but my gut says take the more westernly route at 223 miles in 4 hours, because the drive closer to NYC and through NJ will take at least that long. Right?</p>
<p>Yikes. At that time of the morning, I’d assume at least an hour just from the PA extension (NJTP exit 6) to King of Prussia. Are you thinking of I-78 or I-84 to the the Northeast Extension? I wouldn’t go as far west as Scranton – there was a TON of SB construction along there in July.</p>