If I were in your position, I’d start at the top and work my way down. Fly to Hartford, Ct. (Bradley airport). From there you will have easy access to Amherst and Dartmouth. Then do Skidmore. From Skidmore, drive to Syracuse and Cornell, then into PA and work your way down. Fly home from BWI.
Don’t rent the car at the airport. Take a shuttle from Bradley to your hotel in western Mass, and rent a car at a local car rental outlet there. It is much cheaper if you do not get the car at the airport.
Honestly, his chances of being a walk on lacrosse player are less than slim at most of these schools. The schools already have 40+ recruited players, and 20 of those see no playing time.
He’ll have a better chance of playing in the west.
Is Lehigh definitely on the visit list? If so, you might as well price the flights into Newark and / or Lehigh.
Philly can be a PITA to fly into / from, just my opinion. Dunno about Baltimore.
“A bigger school with LaCrosse” - D3 schools are generally on the smaller side. If he is looking for a big ra-ra type school with big time sports, I can’t think of an East Coast D3 school that would fit that.
Also, you have a wide variety of schools on your list. If he is trying to figure out rural vs. suburban, small vs large, liberal arts vs something more pre-professional, it might more efficient to figure that out on the West Coast, so that you can better narrow down your list for your East Coast visit.
I second the suggestion to look at a map to get a feel for where these schools are. But, also recognize that traffic is a big player, especially travelling around the DC area.
Does he have a certain major in mind, or maybe even just a general idea of what he wants to study? This could help narrow the list. For example, if he is interested in engineering, I would suggest seeing Lehigh and nixing Dickinson. (I love Dickinson, just not for engineering).
There are so many colleges in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast, you could drive yourself crazy trying to come up with a reasonable list without some parameters.
We did a similar tour a few weeks ago. Might want to add Hopkins to the list since you will be there.
I’d fly in and out of Baltimore and see:
Penn
Lehigh
Skidmore
Syracuse
Cornell
Franklin
Marshall
Richmond
total: about 1600 miles, 9 days. Your two long stretches are between Cornell and Franklin (466 mi) and Marshall and Richmond (361 mi). If you plan the Cornell-Franklin route for a Sunday (when colleges generally don’t schedule visits) the route is doable in the time frame, with late aft/eve for driving. There is some beautiful scenery and parks along the route too.
You are also passing through some other university towns like Cleveland (Case Western), and Columbus (OSU) in case he is interested.
If you’re looking at Mid-Atlantic campuses, check out rates and availability for flights in and out of Trenton (Frontier Air) or Allentown/Lehigh Valley (Allegiant). These are small, accessible airports served by budget airlines. You can get in and out of them quickly, and they are both near major interstates.
@TooOld4school - I don’t see how in the world you think you would pass any part of Ohio (i.e. Cleveland or Columbus) on a trip of the colleges you mention in Post #44 (and BTW Franklin & Marshall is one college not two). Syracuse is likely closest to Cleveland at about a 6 hour drive!
What are his academic stats? This trip seems unwieldy to me. And isn’t some of this time eaten up playing in the tournament? Skidmore does not seem like a match to me–definitely not a school with big football game attendance. Lehigh is a better match. What about Bucknell?
Visiting more than one college in one day in the Northeast can be tricky, even when they are very close to each other. All it takes is some traffic, which there generally is, or for a tour to go over the scheduled hour, and you will arrive late to the second school. When you are traveling so far that would be very disappointing. If you do try it, check the tour/info session schedules of the two colleges first and see which order makes more sense travel-wise. If the visit order makes no difference, I would plan the most interesting of the two schools for the morning session, and try to have the second school visit start with an info session, in case you arrive late. It’s harder to catch up with a tour.
I agree that Dartmouth should wait for another New England trip. Certainly traveling to Dartmouth by car from the Baltimore area would require a day just for the drive. I lthink slackerMomMD’s itinerary makes very good sense. If interested, you can definitely visit Dickinson College on the same day as Franklin &Marshall. Gettysburg College is in the same general vicinity of F&M too, if that would be of interest. Lafayette College could also be visited on the same day as Lehigh if you want. Penn and Drexel are very close neighbors, so those two could be hit on the same day also.
You will not find big football at most of the schools on your current list.
Two schools in one day is doable depending on the school. We did American/GeorgeWashU, Bryn Mawr/Haverford, Wellesley/Clark, Smith/Mt Holyoke and Tufts/Brandeis as pairs. When you’re coming from elsewhere you can’t necessarily afford the time to devote one day to a school. We even did Kenyon/Case Western in a day though that was rougher.
I agree that the schools on your list make it difficult but the recommendations with ending near F&M makes sense as it is so close to Baltimore.
The only way I see you getting in the New England Schools would be to fly into Albany,rent a car,Skidmore is very close to airport,less than an hour I think,then Dartmouth and Middlebury as they are about an hour and 15 min apart from each other.
Then drive to the Pa schools doing philly first with Drexel and Penn since they basically share a campus then head out to lehigh/lafayette/Gettysburgh and F&M
If Lax is on the table reach out to all Lax coaches and set up an unofficial visit while there.
Good luck
Cleveland is NOT near the school’s listed…and neither is Columbus.
When are you planning to make this trip?
If you have a LAX tourney in Baltimore, fly into and out of Baltimore.
You can not over estimate how much extra driving time you might need due to Mid-Atlantic/eastcoast traffic.
If your son is hoping to play lacrosse in college he will not be able to “walk on” to any D1 east coast team. It just isn’t going to happen. What year in high school is he? Has he been in contact with coaches? Has he attended recruiting tournaments or camps where east coast coaches have seen him?
There are hundreds of D3 (lacrosse) colleges on the east coast where he could probably play lacrosse. They will be smaller, mostly private liberal arts schools. Those schools also recruit, send coaches to tournaments, and want to see their recruits play.
Contact coaches, and plan ahead to meet coaches during your college visits.
Every D1 Lacrosse college/university in the area (I’m in Maryland) has an excellent club team, with excellent players. The club teams travel and play other club teams. It is a great option if he wants a big university (D1 football, basketball) experience and also wants to play lacrosse.
momofzag, no the tournament is not included in the time to look at colleges.
Well, I would fly according to whichever airports were giving the best rates. Very often, PHL is higher than Baltimore/DC and Newark, NJ.
You should see Drexel while you’re at the Penn campus since the schools are adjoining. Villanova and Temple are the only schools in the Philly area that meet your lacrosse/football team wants. I know you said non-religious and Villanova is a Catholic school and for sure a majority of the kids will be some shade of Catholic, but Syracuse and 'Nova usually appeal to the same studentl so that makes 'Nova defnitely worth a look.
Loyola Maryland (Jesuit) has a very big lacrosse program but no football. Same with Hopkins and American. University of Maryland has both.
I would be reluctant to load up on too many schools without some pre-planning. These schools are so different from each other. I’d take a couple of trips to local schools and then whittle down to a more focused list. It’s unlikely, for instance, that your son would truly like both Villanova and Temple.
When we started our search we found out very quickly what my D liked: a real campus with easy access to a strong walkable downtown (preferably a city). Those preferences discount Franklin and Marshall, Drexel, and Temple. She also didn’t like schools that were too intense or had a student body that was very political - that eliminates Penn and Hopkins. Perhaps your son won’t be as easy to pigeonhole, but some preferences would at least be a good place to start. I’m assuming cost isn’t an issue for you, but we also were able to eliminate (or in most cases, double eliminate) any school that didn’t offer merit.
Wow, we are giving a lot of confusing advice.
In my experience, the minor airports (Trenton, Allentown, even Hartford and Albany) are inconvenient in terms of times, or more expensive, or both (Hartford and Albany). Coming from California, I would stick with Newark, Philadelphia, or BWI if possible as the target airports.
I agree that seeing too many campuses in a short period of time produces overload, but around Philadelphia especially the campuses are really not far apart. If you wanted, and didn’t care about taking the scheduled tour, it would be easy to visit three in a day, and even maybe to do a drive-by on a fourth.
Some clusters, with a Philadelphia-centric orientation:
Penn and Drexel, as everyone has said, are separated by a four-lane street. Travel time between them is about 20 seconds, plus another 10-40 seconds waiting for the light to change. They are a 15-20 minute drive north from the Philadelphia airport, with normal mid-day traffic. Swarthmore is 15 minutes mainly west from the airport. Haverford and Villanova are five minutes apart from each other and about 20 minutes from either Swarthmore or Penn. The University of Delaware, which someone mentioned, is maybe 25-30 minutes driving southwest from the Philadelphia airport or Swarthmore.
Princeton is about an hour northeast of the Philadelphia airport, 45 minutes or so from Penn. Lehigh is a little more than an hour north, and Lafayette 10-15 minutes east of Lehigh. Princeton and Lehigh/Lafayette are probably about 30 minutes apart. About half way between Philadelphia and Lehigh, a little off the most direct route, is Ursinus College, which is probably worth checking out if Franklin & Marshall is a prime target.
Franklin & Marshall is about an hour west of the Philadelphia airport. If you were a crow, you might visit UDel and F&M, but the roads don’t work so well for that, unless you really love driving on two-lane roads through horse country and Amish farms. Dickinson is another hour or so west of F&M.
Towson is over two hours from central Philadelphia, but probably about 2 hours from the Philly airport. A little over an hour from UDel or F&M, maybe 90 minutes from Dickinson. Central Baltimore and Hopkins are about the same distance from Philly or UDel, but 20 minutes more if you are coming from F&M or Dickinson. BWI, the Baltimore airport, is another 20-30 minutes south of there. The University of Richmond is about two hours south of there.
Syracuse is four hours north of Philadelphia, maybe a little more depending on where you start. If you are starting at Lehigh, take an hour off that. Cornell, which is physically much closer, takes about the same amount of time to get to, maybe even longer, because of the dinky roads in and out of Ithaca. If you drove to Cornell from Dickinson or Franklin & Marshall, you would take a different route, it would be about a 3-1/2 hour drive, maybe less, and you would drive right by Bucknell on the way. Ithaca College, 15 minutes from Cornell, may also be worth checking out. Cornell to Syracuse will take about 1-1/2 hours. If you swung slightly out of your way, one Finger Lake west, going from Cornell to Syracuse, you could visit tiny Hobart and William Smith College (that’s one college, not two . . . anymore).
Hamilton and Colgate are each somewhat less than an hour east or southeast of Syracuse. Skidmore is another 1-1/2 hours east of there, as is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (they are 20-30 minutes apart). Driving directly from Philadelphia, RPI is about 4-1/2 hours, and on the way you could stop (if you wanted, and if you didn’t mind adding some additional driving time) and see Vassar and/or Bard.
Williams (in which you ought to be interested if you are interested in Amherst) is about an hour east of Skidmore. Amherst is another 1-1/2 hours east of there, over mountain roads. Driving directly from (or to) Philadelphia, Amherst is a bit less than 5 hours (but traffic in and around New York City can add to that), and your route would take you past Princeton, Yale, Wesleyan (not to mention Columbia, NYU, Rutgers, Fordham, Cooper Union, Sarah Lawrence, Fairfield, and everywhere in North Jersey). Smith and Mount Holyoke are minutes from Amherst. They may hold a lot of interest for a boy, but not as potential colleges. Hampshire, and of course UMass Amherst, are also close by. As others have noted, Dartmouth is another two hours north of Amherst.
I agree with @JHS that doing more than one school a day is doable. The most we did in one day was 3 but often did 2 a day. If you are traveling a distance, its often necessary given work/school schedules and financial limitations.
They key is in planning strategically and taking good notes/photos/whatever else helps you to keep things from becoming a blur. My kids used a worksheet for each school which they filled out after each visit while as I was driving. They graded a school on different attributes that were important to them, jotted notes of salient points and the contact info of those they met. Even used car time to do thank you notes on the spot.
If your son wants to meet with lax coaches, planning is even more important. Reach out early to as you are planning the trip.
A key to visiting more than one school in a day is snagging the first tour/interview/coach meeting early in the day at your first school, to allow time to travel to the second school of the day.
For our road trips, we’d bring (or buy if traveling by plane) a cooler and kept it stocked with water and other drinks, fruit, granola bars, yogurts, whatever snacks and munchies you’d like, in case we were tight on time and couldn’t afford the time to spend on a lunch stop.
After the second college visit of the day, we’d treat ourselves to a sit down dinner in the area of that college, often asking the admissions office for a recommendation, could be a nicer place or some fun ethnic joint. It was a nice reward at the end of the day, we could talk about the day’s visits, check out the local dining options, and let rush hour traffic dissipate before driving to the next college area (or at least closer to it) to be there prior to a morning visit.
The first step for @losinginla and son is to determine what schools they want to visit most, keeping in mind the importance of finding matches and safeties as well as reaches. Once that is done, many of us would be willing to help you strategize a more specific itinerary and discuss feasibility. The hardest thing will probably be finding schools where he can play lacrosse and that fit his other wants of a strong football program/good student fan base and strong academics, as D3 schools might be the best for him lax wise. He might need to prioritize which of his wants is the most important to him.
This sounds risky, but not really. Finish your tournament. Note that Hopkins, Towson and Loyola are within 15 minutes of each other. Get an honest evaluation from your coach. Brutally honest. Your coach will get calls within 24 hours if your player caught college coaches’ eye. Then set your course and hop in your car for a MidAtlantic tour. If D1 potential then focus on Patriot Conference. If D3 potential then focus on Centennial Conference. Consider a Long Island/New England tournament in November and visit NESCAC and the northern half of Patriot Conference. Hope we cross paths this recruiting season. I learned a lot from other lax dads on these trips.
Welcome to PA. (assuming you come and visit.)
As a Californian living in PA who just went through the college choice process, it is a daunting task, and surprisingly, a system that worked for us. Location, size of school, academic emphasis, culture, college-life considerations, R-O-I, etc. all come into play in choosing the right college. We started our trek looking at CA schools, as well as schools from Virginia north to Chicago east, and even a few in Texas. Through the process, my son decided that a) CA was too far, b) Texas was too hot, c) he’s not a southern boy, and d) he wanted a mid-size school in a metropolitan city with a strong chess community and the most challenging academics. This led us to a half-dozen serious searches and a few more schools that were a fit but not what he was really interested in.
Being in PA, we were able to visit his top schools several times, and do a sleep-over for the ones that stood out. The sleep-overs were important, as Harvard (wait-listed) and Penn (wait-listed) were downgraded, Princeton (wait-listed) stayed even, and Carnegie Mellon rose to the top (accepted, and will be attending). Others, such as Georgetown (accepted), were scratched off the list.
That being said, when we started our search, F&M, Gettysburg, Dickenson, Lehigh, Lafayette, Juniata College and Villanova were front-runners for me because of their location (close to home), size (small), atmosphere (friendly) and excellent academics, as well as a belief they would provide excellent financial aid. Although we have been to these campus’ many times, and I love their beauty and appeal, we never visited them. Likewise, although we are very familiar with Stanford and Pomona, having grown up in the Bay Area and going to school there, we never visited these campuses. Why? My son’s criteria were no CA schools, and he wanted to be in a big metropolitan area.
I recommend as you start down this path of choosing a college to first define who your child is and what he wants from the college experience. This is partly trial and error. The results can be surprising.
• We spent a week in L.A. last year on vacation, and from that experience my son knew CA was too far from home for college. Bye, bye Stanford and Pomona (not that he would get in, but that’s a different story). He loved the beaches and the palm trees, but family was more important. He realized this from the vacation.
• We’re from a very small high school, so it seemed natural that he would want a small, intimate college experience. Yet, we’ve spent many days and weekends in D.C., Philly, NY and Boston. And he loved the opportunities the big city presented. Bye, bye all of those wonderful little L.A. colleges I thought he would love.
• He’s great and very advanced in STEM subjects, so we spent many college visits checking out the sciences and engineering. After our third visit at Columbia, he declared, “I love New York. I hate lab coats.” Bye, bye Columbia. Bye, bye anything associated with research that required a lab coat.
• Through these college visits he realized he wanted to study something were there were no ceilings. Most engineering jobs have ceilings, so this realization changed his focus.
We used Mapquest to chart out what schools we would visit on each trip.
Finally, it’s fun to have a Philly cheesesteak in south Philly at lunch and dinner on the wharf in San Francisco. In today’s travel, the coastlines are connected.
You can not swing a dead cat without hitting a great liberal arts college in Pennsylvania.
And (wild exaggeration, but maybe not) about 95% of them field lacrosse teams.
Try to narrow things down by doing some research of your own.