Yes, a little less than 2 hrs from each other. Not much traffic out that way to deal with, either.
Does your son have other NE schools he might want to look at? Other LACs like Williams, Middlebury, Maine schools like Bates, Bowdoin, Colby or Boston area schools?
Whats he looking for anyway? Does he have a size preference, rural or city, certain major, certain vibe or student body characteristics?
Amherst is at least a couple of hours from Dartmouth.
I think you need to narrow down your visits. If it were me, and I had 7-10’days, I would visit no more than 7 schools. We did a number of college trips with our kids for 7-9’days…and never did more than 7 colleges in one trip. I have to say…I know there were schools on the visits that got the short stick simply because our kids were sick of seeing colleges.
Regardless of your itinerary…plan to travel to the college town for arrival the night before your tour/info session. That way, you can get up in the morning, have a nice breakfast, and go to the school. Once…just once…we drove the morning of the college visit…and that was not a good visit.
So…which seven schools are the ones you want to see the most?
I honestly think there are more than seven within a reasonable drive from Baltimore. I would not spend six or more hours driving to Dartmouth, Skidmore or Amherst. Those should be on another trip.
I agree, the NY colleges can be for another trip. It gives us a good reason to return. :)-Thumper1
Doschicos, he is looking for a bigger school, with LaCross. (He plays, either a D1 or D3 school) He is looking for a challenging school. He also wants a school that has a good football team. (not to play, but to watch) A school where the kids like to go to the sporting events. I don’t know if he really cares about rural or city. A school with a vibe like Syracuse, I think. (not a religious school)
Dartmouth is in New Hampshire. Amherst is in Massachusetts. Skidmore is in NY.
Get out a map…you know…the old fashioned paper kind…and put an X on each college town you want to visit.
You are geographically all over the place.
You (and he) are going to find lacrosse in the east is much different than in the west, and it might define the type of school he wants. Towson is well known for lacrosse in the east, not so big a name in the west. Goucher? Not for him with sports very limited. UMBC, or eastern shore schools like Washington or Salisbury. Hopkins is different in sports since it plays D1 in lacrosse and D3 in everything else.
I’d divide the trip into two, the Philly area and then the Maryland area. You might want to add Princeton to the Philly area groups, Drexel, Gettysburg. Save Richmond for your Duke/UNC/Davidson/Elon trip!
Will he be a recruited athlete or does he hope to walk onto a team, or does he want to play club lacrosse? All are available …not at the same schools…and this could also impact your college search.
Has he ever been to Syracuse? If not, how does he know the vibe there?
Getting a spot on a lax team at some of those eastern schools (even at DIII) may be a tougher proposition than he’s expecting.
Mapquest gives good time and routing information – you can get a decent travel time estimate point to point.
I would add Drexel to the list, right near UPenn and they give full rides to NMSF.
Jumping in here. I would fly into Philadelphia. While there, visit Penn, Drexel, Haverford. (I don’t think he’ll like Swarthmore) Head to New Jersey and New York. Skidmore is about four hours away from Philadelphia. You can then drive back into Pennsylvania and visit Lehigh, Lafayette, Franklin and Marshall. From Franklin and Marshall, it’s only an hour drive to Baltimore. There you can visit Johns Hopkins U, Towson (for lacrosse), U of Maryland, College Park, Georgetown, American and George Washington. You can then drive to Richmond which is only about an hour and half away from Washington D.C. Fly back to California from Dulles airport or National airport outside Washington D.C.
^One issue with the above plan is that renting a car from one place and dropping it off at another can be very expensive.
Well, Philly is only about 4 1/2 hours from Richmond so they can fly out of Philly back to California. Or do what others suggested and use Baltimore the entry and exit point.
Plus,there are a dozen colleges listed. In. Y opinion, that is too many to visit on one trip.
The OP needs to get a better honed list of places he wants to see. Once that is established, it will be a lot easier to give suggested routes.
And I would strongly suggest using a map…right now, geographically, the OP is just all over the place.
Not sure what the academic interests are, but the University of Delaware is a great school, right off I95 between Philly and Baltimore. It has strong engineering, business, nursing, Hotel, Restaurant and event planning, among many other majors. Beautiful campus!
The University of Richmond is an awesome LAC and worth a visit. My 2 daughters both attend UR and are doing fantastic there - lots of research opportunities, travel abroad, wonderful professors, small classes. They also have approx. 45 full tuition/full ride scholarships available each year. One of my daughters received a full ride and the other full tuition.
I would recommend you use Google maps to check out driving times. You can make the loop with as many stops as you like, and move them around. While distances in the east are generally “smaller” than in the west, the northeast is still a pretty big area.
Seconded. It’s nice of people to help - and CC people were nice enough to help me in planning trips to schools in MA - but you’ve kind of just abdicated it all because “it’s all just the northeast” in your mind. You at least should figure out what are your New England schools and what are your PA/MD schools instead of asking whether Amherst and Dartmouth are near one another, which you can tell on a map. Good luck - but learn a little about the area. It will save you time and effort.
Fwiw, we did PA/DC schools on one trip and MA schools on another. More than 4-5 in one visit is overload for all, even someone like me who loves college campuses.
If playing lacrosse in college is important to him, I suggest you make a list of school he prefers for academics and one where he is likely to play lacrosse, and see if any are on both lists. His high school or club coaches are likely from the east coast, and he should ask them for suggestions. Lacrosse is still a pretty small community, and they all know each other. Really. My brother has been off the east coast for 25 years and still knows everyone, still runs into coaches and players from high school.
You don’t say what year your son is, but if he’s heading into Junior year, he’d know if he has a shot at any of the big name lacrosse schools by now - Hopkins, Syracuse, Princeton,Maryland, even Towson are probably out if he hasn’t heard from any of them yet. If he just wants to be near big name lacrosse, then of course still keep them on your list but recruiting for most top teams is done by the summer after sophomore year (if not sooner).
When we did the college tour, we picked up the car in Providence and dropped it off in Philly. No extra charge. Check the rental companies.
Thumper1- Walk on
Thumper1 Yes, we visited Syracuse 2 years ago when my daughter looked at colleges.