<p>I am a student who lives in the Northeast. How do parents feel about their children going to a college that's far away from home. Feedback from parents in this situation would be helpful.</p>
<p>I told both of my kids that they can go to a school that is no more than a 6 hour car ride. I am not dealing with airplanes. That worked out fine for my older daughter who is currently a freshman at a school she loves that is just under 4 hours away. My younger one is a sophomore and now understands that she can’t go to California! She will apply to schools that are within a 6 hour car ride. She is perfectly fine with it as there are many outstanding schools within that radius. Many parents do not mind distances that are further and/ or require airplanes, and that is ok! There really is no right or wrong. It depends on the family.</p>
<p>Since I grew up on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, limiting my school choice to a car ride would have been very limiting, indeed. I went to school 5,000 miles from home. My kids have gone to schools 2,800 miles from home (2 kids) and 1,200 miles from home (1 kid). If the schools are convenient to an airport the travel time can be no longer than the 6 hour drive mentioned by twogirls. We have so many college choices in the U.S. that I’d not necessarily be in favor of one of my kids going to college on another continent, but within the Lower 48 I would put no geographic restrictions, as long as the college was a good fit.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman at a college 13-14 hours away by car. But by driving 2 hours to the nearest large airport (rather than dealing with connecting flights out of our local small one) he can get door-to-door in little over five hours. (Two hours’ drive/bus to airport, 1 hour waiting for flight, 1.5 hour non-stop flight, 30-minute drive to his campus.) If he had to take the shuttle to campus rather than get a ride with a friend, that might add an hour or so of waiting. But so far he has had no trouble making it work.</p>
<p>It IS different for everyone. Since we live in the midwest, I didn’t want to deal with too much winter driving (either for us or him). And I have learned over the years that connecting flights are a recipe for delays, so I avoid them. So far, our plan has worked out great.</p>
<p>My parents were living in Africa when I went to college, so I consider the continental US pretty close. We had our kids look for the best colleges for them. Both kids applied to at least one college that would have required flying even for the move in, but both ended up at colleges where driving was feasible. (6 hour drive for the oldest, he flew home for vacations, 3-4 hours for the youngest, he usually comes home on the train.) I think as long as there are direct flights it’s not a big deal.</p>
<p>If the price is right, go wherever you want! Problem is that in terms of time and money, we just can’t get to a lot of these schools to visit.</p>
<p>I encouraged my D to look at colleges that were both close and far, and let her make the decision. She is now 5 hours away by car and 1 hour-ish by direct flight. She can get home fairly easily if needed, but is far enough away to feel independent. She is also in the Northeast, and the advantage is that there are many convenient modes of transport available (bus, plane, train–they all will bring her within 30 minutes of our house).</p>
<p>If my college-aged child had chronic health issues that might flare up, I would be more concerned about easy and quick access to transportation. I also would be more comfortable sending a child cross- country to college if I had friends or relatives in the area who could help in the event of an emergency or just a regular tough time. It wouldn’t be a requirement, though.</p>
<p>Very much an individual family decision. We told our kids to look for the best college for them. I have one D who’s at a rural school across the country. On a bad day it can take her 15 hours to get door to door…on a good day, 12. Not pleasant but it’s about 4 times a year and, for us, that’s not the important factor in determining fit. She’s having an incredible experience with so many opportunities that she finds she has to turn things down because she doesn’t have any more time. I wouldn’t trade her experience for ‘an easy trip home’ for anything. To NJSue’s point, however, if she had a serious medical condition or there were other circumstances necessitating one’s need to be home on a frequent basis, that would alter my view.</p>
<p>As a parent of a kid who went through the admissions process last year, I would want my kid to go to the best school possible, even if far away.</p>
<p>In my case, I would have preferred my kid from a purely personal standpoint to go to the University of Florida, which is only 1 1/2 hours from my house, but his two final choices was UCLA and University of St Andrews in Scotland, both very far away. The kid has to do what is best for the kid, not what is best for the parent.</p>
<p>Also, I think there is some admissions advantage in applying to a far away school, because schools like geographic diversity, so a kid from Florida might catch the eye of a school in Oregon.</p>
<p>I think a lot of it depends on the readiness of the student to be far away from home. If my child is comfortable and confident only coming home 3 - 4 times/year, I’m okay with it. On the other hand, students who might get anxious or homesick may need to be closer.</p>
<p>I suppose trust also enters into it. As a parent, sending my child away would require trust that they can handle things in a relatively mature way, because I can’t easily check on them!</p>
<p>We are looking at colleges both near and far for S2. Our only requirement is in the US. S1 is 4 hours away by his choice.</p>
<p>It depends on the kid and the situation. My daughter went to school 18 hours away by car, and two flights away. She is anxious and a homebody and it has been a major issue. Great school, she loves her friends and the city, but it has not been a good situation. :(</p>
<p>I live in NY and one d attended school just outside Boston and the other upstate NY. I would not have limited them based on geography… but I did like that there were travel options. Boston is 4 hours by car but you can also fly, take Amtrak, or the inexpensive or charter buses. With upstate NY, it was a longer drive but you could also fly, take Amtrak and so on. The most isolated school we looked at was Oberlin. .so during holidays they do provide bus service to the Cleveland airport about 45 minutes away… but not on a regular weekend basis. To me that was a drawback if you needed to come home for an event which for us would be Passover seder or family wedding… but it wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker if it was the best school with the best financial package. In our case, that didn’t prove to be the case and I was just as happy.</p>
<p>I would not limit my kids to a specific distance, for school or anything else. And if they felt they had to comply, I guess that would mean they’re pretty malleable-might become a negative as they try to make their own life decisions later on. I’ve always believed that if you can’t explore new places as you’re just starting out in life without a job, wife, kids, etc. when WOULD you? </p>
<p>My S joined the military at 18 and was soon overseas. I can imagine the laughter if I’d insisted he stay close by! Yes, it was stressful on me, but he was an adult. My older D spent last year in a college on the opposite coast-close to her dad, but not to me. So she came home once in 9 months. The great thing about modern technology is that I spoke to her more often online and by cell phone than I did when she lived in town! She did decide that a small town was not for her and has moved back to Seattle, though.</p>
<p>My youngest is only looking at a group of schools on the opposite side of the US. She and I are very close and it will be hard. But I’d really hate for her to stay here out of some sense of obligation and then wonder “what if” for the rest of her life.</p>
<p>We live in SoCal and my son went to a CA school about 2.5 hours drive away. His freshman year he would come home about once a month. By his junior year he would only come home during term breaks and then not for the entire break. So, it didn’t really matter how far away he was at that point.</p>
<p>Our daughter is 4 years younger and she applied to some CA schools and some out of state. She ended up choosing a school in MA, a 5+ hour plane ride. We see her during school breaks and the summer. It was a tough decision, especially since all her girlfriends were going to CA schools. Mom was particularly worried about the area around the school being a little on the rough side. She moved into an off campus apartment after her freshman year and that brought more worries for Mom. But daughter is doing very well. Her two roommates are from towns about 2-3 hours drive from school and she has visited their homes. Three boys they know have one of the other apartments on the building (there are three apartments total in the building) and the girls and boys share meals and some activities. She is a junior now and doing very well both in the school and friends areas. The school turned out to be a great “fit” for her.</p>
<p>I believe that one’s college experience is highly dependant on the friends you make. Have good friends and the experience will be good (assuming that you do well in classes also). My daughter is quite an introvert and we were scared about having her so far from home at first. But the school seemed like the best fit (small engineering school compared to the large mega CA schools she was also accepted to). We did go to Parent’s Weekend (about a month into the school year) her freshman year kind of just to check up on her. She was fine and was really taking to being at college.</p>
<p>{When we dropped her off at college, we arrived in the area about a week in advance, did some sightseeing with her, visited the school again to get some paperwork out of the way, bought school supplies and some additional clothing (especially colder weather clothing). We helped move her stuff into her dorm room on “move in day” and then left it to her to arrange it the way she wanted it (it was a triple with two other girls). We then left and went out exploring the area just my wife and I. We came back two days later and took DD to lunch to see how things were going. DD was having fun getting to know her new friends and so we flew home the next day. I think that still having us in town was comforting to DD even though we weren’t right there (and she DEFINITELY DIDN’T want us RIGHT THERE).} </p>
<p>She took the chance and it has worked out very well for her. Now the question will be; where does she look for work after college with most of her college friends being from the Northeast?</p>
<p>HPuck, thank you for sharing. It was reassuring to read your post, as the school looking perhaps like the best fit for S2 is also across the country, and he is an introvert as well, though not particularly the homesick type. I particularly like the idea of spending the week in the area at drop-off time, and the check-back a couple of days later. We will do the same if DS chooses a school out of the area.</p>
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You can set reasonable geographic limits and still have some of the best schools in the nation available to your kid, no matter where you live. Colleges that would require air travel were not an option for my kids. Flying is expensive and the current system eats up a day of precious vacation on either end. My kids came home for short breaks like Thanksgiving, to attend important family occasions, or just to recharge their batteries. If they were far away, none of that would have been possible. Unless you have a big travel budget or, for whatever reason, think prolonged absences are desirable, I can’t see a good reason to send a child across the country–whatever you think is there, is surely also closer to home.</p>
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No, it just means that they realize the universe may not revolve solely around them, and that matters like money and family cohesion can be important. Our kids are going to have to “comply” with all sorts of limits as adults, and having always gotten exactly what they want through the teen years will not serve them well.</p>
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Not really relevant, considering joining the military (and thus earning money and presumably traveling on the military’s dime) isn’t at all like going to college (in which case the student generally remains at least partially financially dependent on the parents). </p>
<p>My son started college at 15 at a school 6.5 hours away by car. The location was, frankly, a pain to deal with. We’d have kept dealing with it if the college had worked out better for him, but it didn’t. In retrospect, it would have been better had the distance not been so great; we might have had a chance of seeing the depression and illness that engulfed him before the first semester ended. He was the target of a good bit of bullying and, amazingly to us, the school knew this (admitted it to us!) but did nothing to help. That is not a function of the distance, of course; had his first school been a great fit, he’d still be there. </p>
<p>He’s now at a school that is 65 minutes away by car. This was totally his choice. This has worked out pretty well, as I can spend a few hours with him on a weekend, taking him out to eat and for shopping (replenishing his food), and it’s easy for him to come home on a weekend if he wants to.</p>
<p>He spent this past Jan term in Germany and summer before last in Germany, too, and Christmas before last, I gave him a (solo) trip to San Francisco (we’re in the Washington DC area) as his main present, so it’s not as though he’s always close by. He’s talking now of spending perhaps the next year or two working overseas. (He graduates in May.)</p>
<p>IMHO, it depends on the kid and on the family. I looked at colleges up to 4 hours away by car when I was a student (and this after having spent time in a boarding school on another continent); I just didn’t want to be that far from home, didn’t want to deal with schlepping dorm stuff on a plane, didn’t want to spend a lot of time getting from one place to another. Since it was my mother’s idea that I go off to boarding school, I doubt she’d have had a problem with my wanting to go to college a lot farther away. She stayed local for her college years; she grew up in DC and attended GW. My older brother has scarcely traveled and attended locally; younger bro started at Texas Tech. Most of my friends from high school attended local flagship U, and I ended up there for a while, too, as did my younger bro. And most of the kids my son went to high school with are at local flagship U, too. </p>
<p>I can totally see why location would be a factor for some families, and for some kids. Blanket statements one way or the other strike me as pointless. It’s such an individual thing!</p>
<p>Our DD2 was in introvert who attends school 2K miles from our house. She has grown tremendously while at college. She navigates airports and jumbled flight times on her own now. She has made good friends at school and is also not afraid to do her own thing she figured out the local bus system so she could get to a freestyle climbing gym downtown. The only issue is she gets cranky if we call while she is eating. :)</p>
<p>My parents set no location restrictions and I ended up at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and then the University of Idaho - 2,900 miles and 900 miles, respectively, from my San Francisco Bay Area home. I didn’t return home until semester breaks, although my mother chose to fly <em>to</em> me a couple of times during spring break to visit.</p>
<p>Quite honestly - knowing that travel costs were not a significant budgetary limitation - I would have resented it (and rejected it) had my parents attempted to impose any restrictions. “Family cohesion” is one thing, but telling your nearly-adult son or daughter “I need you within arm’s length even when you’re at college” is way too helicopter-parentish for my liking. Now, if two round-trip plane tickets a year would be a budget issue, that’s a different story.</p>
<p>I’ve struggled with this issue. We live in the Boston area and originally set a 300 mile limit, since there are so many good colleges around here. But in the end, she applied to 4 schools in Cal., two in the Midwest, and a couple in the South (only two in the NE). </p>
<p>Now I just want her to be someplace to which she can get via a direct flight (and I’m hoping there might be a price difference to cover some of these flights). </p>
<p>I could say that I don’t really love driving down to NY or NJ from here, but I guess the truth is that, in our house, the father (i.e., me) is a big pushover.</p>