Help please: planning first college trip to the US (visiting from the UK)

Parents Forum
1

HI everyone - I have taken on the ambitious challenge of taking my D & S (rising senior and a rising junior) to visit a medley of different colleges (they have different interests - Econ/Science), while also taking the opportunity to see as much of the US as we practically can. Our trip is in 2 months time and am beginning to panic as not sure where to start re firming up the details…

In Essence, our plan is to:

Day 1: Fly into Chicago
Day 20: Fly out of NYC

The colleges on out visit list are:

  • U Chicago
  • Bowdoin
  • Bates
  • Boston College
  • Tufts
  • Wesleyan
  • Haverford
  • Vassar

Any input suggestions re the choices/sequencing / where to stay / where to possibly have a break etc would be very welcome. Am okay to drive / take internal flights as required.

Many thanks…

2

You have not provided enough information for people provide helpful suggestions. Need more info about student credentials, finances, etc. Look at chance me threads to see the level of information that yields helpful suggestions.

3

In Chicago, visit Lake Forest and DePaul.
Near Boston, visit wpi and northeastern.
In Poughkeepsie visit both Marist and Vassar (start with Marist).
If visiting haverford, visit Bryn mawr and zither swarthmore or villanova.
In NYC, visit Fordham.

4

@MYOS1634 Good suggestions. “In Chicago, visit Lake Forest and DePaul.
Near Boston, visit wpi and northeastern.
In Poughkeepsie visit both Marist and Vassar (start with Marist).
If visiting haverford, visit Bryn mawr and zither swarthmore or villanova.
In NYC, visit Fordham.”

Also, if you have time, Visit Notre Dame in Indiana
Boston University

if you are going from New York to Massachusetts, while in Connecticut, visit Yale, Trinity and Connecticut College. You can also probably fit in Brown.

Also, Colby College in Maine

In Pennsylvania, you can probably see Lehigh and Lafayette on the way from Philly to New York.

Good luck.

5

What about adding some tourism? Ithaca has both Cornell and Ithaca College but also the Finger Lakes area! In Pittsburgh, visit Pitt AND the Andy Warhol museum and the Frick house! When crossing Pennsylvania, make a stop in the middle for the night, stay in State College and walk around a college town, in the morning see a gigantic state university and its stadium!

6

We are an int’l family. We did a college roadtrip with our junior son just a couple of months ago. We’ll be doing another college roadtrip in June. Here are some things to consider.

  1. Before you start planning the logistics of your trip, **eliminate schools that are not financially feasible/b. Do NOT underestimate the difficulty of getting into schools with less than 50% admit rates.

  2. Go to **Google Maps and “create a map”. **

  3. Plot the airports on the map. I assume you are departing from LHR. Beside the 2 US airports you’ll be using for this upcoming trip (ORD & JFK), check which other US airports have non-stop flights to LHR and plot all those US non-stop destinations on your Google map. In Wikipedia, pretty much every major airport has a table like this where you can easily find the non-stop destinations:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathrow_Airport#Passenger

While it’s not absolutely essential to fly from school to the UK non-stop, it is certainly a nice-to-have. After dealing for years with the logistics of 2 kids in 2 different boarding schools in 2 different parts of the US, our family appreciates first-hand the advantage vs. hassle of having/not having access to a major int’l airport. Be forewarned that schools in aviation backwaters like Maine (Bowdoin College) will be a comparative hassle for an int’l student to get to. Yes, all schools will offer some assistance in getting students to an airport. But nothing beats not having to deal with the hassle of coordinating connecting flights, especially in the winter time with weather delays….

  1. Consider other schools that are accessible by the other non-stop US destinations. Don’t restrict yourself to the US East coast. If it’s a nonstop flight, it makes little travel difference if the destination airport is Minneapolis vs. JFK. Plot all the colleges you are interested on the map.

  2. Once all those locations are annotated relative to the highway (speedway) system, you can pick a logical driving route from destination airport to the departure airport. Do NOT visit the poshest school first. Another CC poster wisely remarked: if you visit the million dollar mansion first, all subsequent houses will look shabby.

  3. To avoid the hassle of constantly unpacking & repacking, pick a hotel location from where you can visit more than one school.

  4. Since you will be staying in hotels for 3 weeks, if you haven’t done it already,** join a hotel frequent travel program** and try as much as possible to stick to that hotel chain to maximize points. A hotel chain may have multiple brands. Book your kids’ hotel room and the parents’ hotel room on the same freq travel account. You will be collecting points quickly and will be earning room upgrades before the end of your trip.

  5. Make sure to register your visit at every school you visit. You want the school to record that you took the trouble to visit. “Demonstrated interest” is a factor for admissions at some schools.

Boston is an obvious city where you will want to spend more time. When you update your list of schools, we can offer recommendations on which other places are worth a tourism look.

7

@lostaccount - thanks for the pointer, here’s some background info on my D (rising senior):

  • ACT (33)
  • SAT Subjects: Maths II (780); Chemistry (780)
  • IB: She is predicted a score of 41 (which is reasonably good but not outstanding according to her school adviser). She has taken what is considered tough subjects - like Higher level Maths, Chemistry etc.
  • General academics - she has been in the 10% of her class since grade 9 and has
  • Work experience - c.4 internships of 1-2 months duration each (at a start-up online fashion company; a consultancy firm etc)
  • Extra curricular - lots of sports, dance, drama and musicals (meaningful parts as well supporting activities like make-up artist etc)
  • Community service - she has been extremely active with two orphanages across Asia and has spent several holidays volunteering there with meaningful roles
  • Essays - she should have good meaningful things to write about - but her first draft essays were a 5/10 per her adviser (so clearly much more work to be done)

She is looking to major in Economics…but this keeps changing I have to say. Finances would be a challenge but is not a criteria at this stage.

Her Uni advisor who is extremely frank - told me that her profile is average for the more selective US universities …and all the colleges listed above is a high reach for her. The list was drawn up by her her after hours of research (only U Chicago was added by her Brother) …so it is a bit of a conundrum.

8

@MYOS1634 …we would certainly like to add in tourism where we can …and those are fantastic ideas. Do you think Haverford and Bryn Mawr would doable in a day?

9

@londondad …thanks a lot …I had Notre dame on my list earlier but got taken off by her adviser but can’t recall why…will relook / research again …

10

Yes, they are doable in a day. Be sure to run the net price calculators on schools before visiting. Also, if you don’t have a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges, get one and read up before choosing where to visit. We made copies of the pages and took them with us when visiting, too (I had kid read them in the car on the way to each college before visiting to refresh their memory on the school, worked well for us).

11

@GMTplus7 …wow…Super helpful, and made me realise the level of planning that is required to make most of the trip / get it done smoothly. I will go through and update / finalise the list shortly and revert… Based on my D profile above, any thoughts on which school (from current list) maybe better to take off/ replace with others…

12

Yes, Byrn Mawr and Haverford are about 1 mile apart (they’re part of a consortium, students can take their classes at either one). Dedicate at least one evening and a full day to Philadelphia, but at that point you’ll be at the end of your trip and taking two days “off” may allow everyone to recharge batteries better.
So, if Day1 = BMC+H, Evening Day1, Day2, Day3 = Philadelphia, Evening Day 3= travel somewhere else. A train will take you from Philly to DC or NYC in about 2H/2H30, and you can eat dinner on the train.

I second intparent’s recommendation: buy a Fiske Guide. I would add a Princeton review’s best colleges and/or Insider’s guide to the colleges. Try to define “fit” - universities have a “personality” and “fit” means that your profile matches the university’s. You could, of course, go against type, but applying to universities with very different “fits” (ie., W&L and Oberlin :D) is a very bad idea.

It’s not that her profile is “average for the universities she’s looking at”. It’s that any college with an admission rate below 30% for Americans is going to be a lucky draw for her. And, as GMT said, DO NOT underestimate the difficulty of getting into some colleges with 40-50% admissions rates - LACs, in particular, have self-selective pools of applicants, so that the acceptance rate may be higher than expected, but the selectivity (ie., stats/profile of admitted students) often makes them very hard to get into.

13

Many of us in the backwaters of Maine, especially the backwaters south of Augusta, take a bus to Boston Logan. I live in Brunswick, and there is a bus station/train station here. The bus will take you to Portland and you can take an Express bus directly to Boston Logan. Not ideal, but an option.

14

I don’t see any true safeties on that list, and you want to make sure she has a college or two that she is pretty safe to get into and you know you can pay for. Dickinson would be a low match that she might like (but they care about interest, so visiting and applying in their EA round is a good idea). She might get merit there, too.

15

It sounds like you really need to add some match and likely schools. Here’s a useful tool for finding schools similar to the ones on your list. The “Colleges selected as peers by this school” lists tend to be aspirational (schools with similar or lower admit rates) so make sure to look at the “Colleges that selected this college as a peer” list as well.

http://chronicle.com/interactives/peers-network?

Some suggestions to match the LACs on your list; I would consider these match schools, with the exception of Hamilton which would be a reach. They are all in upstate NY, CT or PA. We did these schools plus a couple of safer schools (Gettysburg, Muhlenberg, Allegheny) in a 5 day road trip out of Boston. We were surgical about the trip and really focused on schools. You could do a kinder gentler version with Haverford, Wesleyan and Vassar added in and with visits to the Finger Lakes, a side trip to NYC or any other touristing you’d like in a week and a half or two.

Union
Skidmore
Hamilton
Hobart and William Smith
St. Lawrence
Dickinson
Franklin and Marshall
Connecticut College (close to Wesleyan)
Trinity

Hamilton, Conn College and Trinity are all in that same athletic league (NESCAC) as Wesleyan, Tufts, Bates and Bowdoin.

You may also want to consider all or part of the 6 college tour of schools in Ohio (Denison, Oberlin, C. of Wooster, Wittenberg, Ohio Wesleyan, Kenyon.)

http://www.ohiosixcollegetours.com/faq

If the Ohio schools don’t interest your daughter you might want to fly from Chicago to Boston.

Bates and Bowdoin can be done as a long day trip out of Boston. Adding Colby would mean an overnight. Many students do the three schools as a loop (Bates-Colby-Bowdoin or Bowdoin-Colby-Bates.) Maine is really nice in the hot summer months and Portland is an attractive small city so you may want to spend a day or two on the Maine coast. There’s also outlet shopping in Kittery and Freeport Maine, so if that’s something attractive to you can add a couple of hours in for a little retail therapy.

When you look at the map consider how your daughter feels about travel times. You can reach the airport from a school like Tufts or BC in no time. Schools like Bowdoin or Wesleyan will mean a longer but still manageable drive. Colby, Union or Skidmore would be longer and St. Lawrence and HWS are a bit of a slog. Most schools have a bus to the airport at the start and finish of major school breaks.

If I were you I’d shoot your daughter’s college counselor an email with a list of “safer” schools you’ve gotten from this thread and see what she thinks. She may have insight into your daughter’s thinking that may help you narrow the list.

16

St Lawrence : fly into Montreal.

17

I’m assuming the OP’s safety schools are in the UK.

18

@valent2016 “Do you think Haverford and Bryn Mawr would doable in a day?”

Yes, definitely. Haverford and Bryn Mawr are only 1 mile apart on the “Main Line”. Villanova is only 2 miles from BM also but in the other direction. Two summers ago we did a one hour self guided tour of Villanova and did the Haverford tour and info session in the morning and were able to make it down to Swarthmore (in South Philly) for the afternoon tour.

I second an earlier comment on direct flights. We have not considered schools such as Vanderbilt, Tulane, etc as it is just too much of a hassle to have an 18 year old kid navigate an internal flight transfer after flying in from London.

Also, if you are in Chicago, you should definitely see Northwestern. It is a truly impressive school.

Good luck.

19

I would drop Chicago from the list and visit Georgetown University and George Washington University in Washington DC. You can see a lot in DC.

20

"Before you start planning the logistics of your trip, eliminate schools that are not financially feasible (i.e. if you need financial aid and the school doesn’t offer it to int’l students, then just don’t bother). "

This is invaluable advice from @GMTplus7 and cannot be stressed enough.

It looks like you mentioned further down in the thread that “finances would be a challenge but not a criteria at this stage” . My advice is that if there is a chance that finances would be a challenge, they absolutely should be a criteria. All of the schools on your list are the types that students (depending on their likes/dislikes) fall in love with. This forum is littered with posts from students or parents who gained acceptance to their “dream school” only to face the heartbreaking decision of turning it down or putting a huge strain on family finances.

Almost every college in the US has plenty of financial info as well as available merit scholarships on their website. (As an aside, it is extremely difficult to get a merit scholarship from a highly selective school–it compares to winning the lottery, IMO). I am not well-versed on International financial aid–but you should look into what international aid is available and/or be comfortable with the full tuition (including room and board) price tag before visiting.

On the other hand, if 50-60k a year (in American dollars) is do-able,then you are good to go! Good luck with your list–you are smart to come here to start the process.