Help Me Plan a College Visit Road Trip

In mid-july my rising junior and I have a week on the east coast. We will be starting in Pittsburgh and need to fly home out of Philly. We have previously toured Point Park, CMU self tour, Wright State, and Baldwin Wallace. My son in more interested in conservatory-like programs. I think for sure we want to hit Shenandoah. We are willing to skip CCM because I think that takes us in the wrong direction. And will get the NYC schools on a trip when Broadway is open. The others I was thinking might be in range are Rider, Montclair, Hartt, UArts and Temple. Am I missing any? Will those work is some sort of loop from Pittsburgh? I guess we could fly out of somewhere other than Philly if someone has a better idea going in a different direction from Pittsburgh. Must start from Pittsburgh. I am not exactly the queen of directions, so I am open to ideas or schools I have not thought about. Like if you are waiting for the waitlist to move and you want to plan an entire itinerary for us, feel free!

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If you are going from Pittsburgh to Philly, you could visit Penn State along the way.

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Also, you could save Montclair and Hartt for when you go to NYC as they are more in that direction.

Not sure it’s helpful, but when my D was at camp in the Catskills before her Junior year we flew into Newark and did Syracuse and Ithaca, then hit Wesleyan and ended up in Boston and toured Emerson, BU, and Boston Conservatory. Flew home from Boston. We did NYC schools on Broadway trips and you might want to save that for the Fall. We never got to Pennsylvania but were willing to do another trip if any of those schools were an option. It was nice to land in Boston after all that driving.

@Skymomla I did not think of doing it that way. I think your “tour” hits schools that are going to be out of our price range, so I was discouraging him falling in love with them. The philly loop (Penn State, ShenCo, JMU, Rider, UArts, Temple and Muhlenburg) are going to tend to be better fits but I know he really wants to see Hartt and Montclaire, so maybe we fly out of Newark instead. I think we are still too tight. We will be starting the tour portion of the trip mid-day from Pittsburgh after 2 long weeks of MT intensive. So I figure Penn State Day 2, ShenCo Day 3, JMU Day 4, and then the 4 Philly area schools Day 5 and 6. Maybe we pull off Montclair if the stars align or if we have a late flight out on Day 7. But we need to get back because he has a bunch of other stuff that starts right away. I feel like I should let the poor kid rest at some point!

Hart is definitely worth a visit, but it is the farthest removed from the rest of your schools and it doesn’t fit in with the rest of your loop. I would either end your trip there and fly out of Bradley Airport near Hartford or save it for when you come back to see the NYC schools.

Hart is about 2.5 hours from Montclair and about 4 hours back to the airport. Both times can be extended if you run into traffic.

DeSales, near Bethlehem has a nice little theater program as well!