Since others have food suggestions, when in Poughkeepsie make a detour to Rossi’s Deli. A small italian market with AMAZING sandwiches. http://rossideli.com/Rosticceria_Rossi_and_Sons/Main.html
I am still dying to do the “Walk Across The Hudson” near Poughkeepsie. That might be an enjoyable diversion. The Culinary Institute of American is near Poughkeepsie, in Hyde Park, if you want to splurge on a special meal. There is beautiful countryside in Duchess County nearby, if you want to explore scenic routes between Vassar and Yale. There are also some charming towns (e.g. Kingston) along the Hudson. Look into performances at the Long Wharf Theater, in New Haven, or visit some of the neighboring upscale waterfront communities like Westport. Yale also has an excellent museum.
@collegemom3717, yes our route home will take us right by Cornell and Colgate, or at least as close as civilization gets to either school. Did a similar trip with my son last spring, Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, Colgate. That was a long trip!
And thanks everyone for the tips on the food. Good to keep focused on what is important!
Don’t hesitate to bail on the guided tours at any time for any reason or for no reason. Or don’t even bother with them in the first place.
If the kid doesn’t like the looks of a place, go ahead and ditch. It is also fine to not even bother to get out of the car. We had lots of “tours” that turned out to just be drive-byes. Then you can use the time to see another nearby school or do something else more fun.
My kids seemed to get 90+% of the value of a visit from just physically being on/around the campus and seeing it in person. 30 minutes of campus walk-about plus 30 minutes drive around the neighborhood is plenty for any school imho. Especially in the summer and especially for an initial tour.
I would start with what majors does each school have that she may be interested in. I would also investigate any varsity or club sports if she is interested in any of those.
Northeastern could be work checking out while your are in the Boston area. DD2 added that to the Tufts visit and she liked it. If you are visiting Lafayette, you might as well visit Lehigh. Probably just a tiny bit easier to get admitted than Vassar.
I would also be interested in learning how much she likes the city vs. the country. Visit a school like Swarthmore or Villanova in Philly vs. a school like Cornell, that is not really close to any major city. Some schools like Vassar are not in a major city, but you are only a bit over an hour from NYC. Definitely within visiting range.
@Much2learn Cornell has one of the best college towns in the country, so perhaps that compensates. There are also lots of attractions in the Finger Lakes.
Poughkeepsie is a good two hours to NY. Could be more with traffic.
There is no right or wrong about Cornell, or Vassar, or any other school, it is just in understanding what the student is interested in. Cornell grads that I know loved it, but if you want to be in or near a major city, then it may not be your top choice. I would personally like it there, but my big city loving DD1 had little interest.
Thanks you, Ohioda51, for this thread. We will be doing a college trip with our rising senior this summer and I have had many of the same thoughts. Our college counselor said to NOT interview at any school that she had not done any real research on. Her advise was, when in doubt, don’t interview at that time. My daughter is working at her sleep-away camp this summer and is really out of commission until mid-August. I do not think she will have any real time to do college research before our trip.
I would love to hear what you more seasoned parents think about his advice…
I’m a Cornell grad and the parent of a Cornell grad. I love Cornell. But if you want to be in or near a major city, it shouldn’t even be on your list.
Bard is 45 minutes from Vassar, much more rural, easier to get into. They do senior projects. It’s sort of love it/hate it place.
Barnard is only barely a women’s college, but I totally get rejecting it out of hand. I did 40 years ago coming from an all girl high school.
I did the opposite trip a few weeks ago, Michigan and Miami. We flew though.
New Haven is not dodgy so much as yucky:(. Fordham is not in the greatest place either. What about Sarah Lawrence. Bronxville is in Westchester. 25 min train ride to Grand Central. Beautiful town.
@crossfitmama - I don’t think it takes that long to get up to speed on a college. You’re daughter doesn’t need to be an expert on the school, just spent some time getting familiar through the website and guide books. If interviewing, it’s a good idea to have at least 3 solid questions to ask at the interview - questions that are not easily answered via info readily available online. If she is visiting smaller schools or schools where the common data set indicates that demonstrated interest is considered in the admission process, I think it would benefit your rising senior to interview.
If fitness facilities matter to her, be sure to check those out. These can vary significantly from school to school.
It is also good if she can talk to a few students. There should be some taking summer classes, or working on campus.
We took away most of our daughter’s chores from end of soph year thru the end of college apps. We told her that we would “trade” these chores for an unbreakable promise to focus on college and research from 1 -3 Sundays. Worked like a charm…both to focus her, and to keep me from driving her crazy with “helpful” links and comments the rest of the time. i told her that I was her secretary…she was to tell me what to research, what she was looking for, etc., and I gave her ideas. When we went on tours, we always went to the dining hall and asked a random student or two how they liked it. We paid attention to how many students were wearing spirit wear, and if anyone yelled anything out the window (“go to BU” or “dont come here.” again, I was her se reatary, writing down her impressions as fast as possible before I voiced my own. We actually had fun!
The thing with some of these little schools is, it may not be normal there in the summer because they don’t have classes. So you can see a bunch of buildings but no students. At least not normal students. I remember my D2 attended a dance program at Vassar over the summer, as a teenager.
When we did our college visits, we saw two reasonably proximate (within a couple hours)colleges per day. But there were people there. In the summer, I fear you might run out of stuff to see/do at each school rather faster.
Schools aside: If you’re there at the right time, there’s theater et al at Vassar, and at Bard.
Skidmore might be interesting to “see” too. Yes, your daughter may like it, but I was thinking maybe you can go to the races. They have some crafts fairs up there this summer too.
School or no school, Ithaca is great in the summer. IMO. You can spend some nice family time hiking in the state parks ringing the city. If you go, be sure to stop in at the Dairy Bar for ice cream, and maybe see bare-budget shakespeare performed at the Plantations. If desired, you could even visit a college or two while you’re there. Although we often skip that step, these days.
[Maybe you can tell, I’ve been planning our summer weekends…]
Also, on a thread where Wesleyan, Bard, I-80 and Ohio have been referenced, I don’t think I’m too out of line in mentioning Oberlin College, Though you likely wouldn’t need this trip to stop there, and nobody will probably be there in the summer anyway.
Likewise “closer to home”, there are non-techies who attend Carnegie Mellon. It has its own size/setting that may be interesting for your daughter to see and compare.
I spent a few years driving across I-80 myself, and if I were you, if I could avoid it,(with no detriment to D, of course) I would. Those eight hour drives got real old, real fast.
If she has an academic interest already, you can set up meetings with professors in that department to get a better feel of what her time there will be like. Also, have a meal in a dining hall and check out the food.
@Ohiodad51, Fourth of July weekend is a great time to be in NY City, but not such a great time to be on the road.
Since this is just a “get to know what’s out there” introduction, I guess it doesn’t matter too much which schools you choose, but I would tend not to include Bucknell because of its location and because your daughter’s already been there. (Right?)
If NYC is a must and Yale is a must then I’d concentrate on schools with those locations as starting points.
For example, from Yale, you could easily see Wesleyan, Trinity, Conn College, Brown. There are great summer-at-the beach places to stay in Connecticut.
From NYC/Vassar & Fordham, you could schedule Barnard, NYU, Bard, Sarah Lawrence. (Another Barnard fan here.) Hope you’ll be in NYC for the fireworks!
If you’re driving by Cornell and Colgate, you could also consider Hamilton and Skidmore. Upstate New York is phenomenally beautiful in the summertime.
Your next trips could include the Philly/PA/MD schools in one group and the Boston/MA/NH/VT/ME schools in another.
Because we live overseas, we only made one trip, but it was a long one. We interspersed college visits with a lot of down time. We covered 14 schools in about 3 weeks – and saw a variety of reach/match/safety, urban/suburban/rural, big/medium/small.
We did a lot of prior research, but despite our best laid plans, our son’s number ultimate ED choice – and his ultimate alma mater – was a last minute add-on. His previous, unvisited #1 turned out to be a disappointment and dropped off list. So be flexible. (But be sure to check the holiday schedule for the add-ons.)
We tried to allocate one day to each school: did the tour, the info session, ate in the dining hall, walked around campus, interviewed where possible (though your daughter may be a year away from interviewing). If she has special interests that are not included in the tour, stop by those facilities. For my son it was the art department (which was seldom on the tour). For your daughter it might be the theater / performing arts center.
We tried to spend the night at a top choice school, so either traveled from place to place in the morning or late afternoon. Walked around campus and town. Had dinner at a place that students might hang out. We saw all the art museums, because that was a special interest.
@monydad, My daughter has been doing summer theater at Oberlin for the last three or four years and you are right, it is exactly what she says she wants at this moment. But, it is just thirty minutes from home, and she wants to go away. And yeah, Rt 80 through Pennsylvania sucks pretty bad. At least now there is some sense of civilization off the route. When I was in college, you left Lewisburg and there was a Burger King at the exit for Clearfield (about 2 hours away) and then nothing again until you got close to the Ohio border. Unfortunately, I am stuck driving it the next four years with the older kid.
@momrath, yes she has been to Bucknell before, but it is right on our route back home, and will make a nice place to stop for the night to break up the drive back from New York. My son visited Hamilton when we were at Colgate for a football camp, and I am not sure my daughter would like the vibe of the place, but certainly it is worth a stop on the way out to Boston if she likes it. I will have her take a look at Skidmore and Sarah Lawrence as well. Thanks.
And more generally, one of the frustrating things that I am hoping to nip in the bud is that right now what my daughter says she wants swings wildly. What she wants substantively hasn’t really changed. A place where she can continue with theater but not necessarily get a BFA and a school with a strong public policy/social work program. But the setting changes weekly. Originally, she liked Bucknell so said she wanted a smaller school away from everything. Then she got excited about UChicago and wanted something in a city. In a lot of ways, it is like she is shopping for her first new car, there are a lot of cool things that attract her, but she has no context yet. Hopefully, this trip will give her some of that context.
One additional question that kinda got buried up the thread - Is it normal/acceptable to just show up and do a tour on the day of your visit or do we really need to schedule ahead of time? We were talking last night about hitting Wesleyan after her tour at Yale if she is not too tired, but the consensus was to play it by ear if possible.
Thanks again to everyone.
Scheduling ahead of time totally depends upon the size and popularity of the school. Check the websites to see if they limit the space available on tours. You can always cancel if it is too much in one day.