Hi there- we plan to come to the East Coast from California last week of March.
Travel: Any input or help on where to fly in and out of- can we do it all with trains, buses, and taxis? I really hope to avoid the stress of driving/parking…
Logistics: what order should we visit schools? Any advice is helpful! We can take about a week, and for sure want to spend a full day a Penn. Otherwise, open…I know we are not the first to do this kind of tour, so your input would be great! Thank You!
Schools on the Desired to Visit list:
UPenn
Columbia
NYU
Yale
Georgetown
MIT
Boston U
Carnegie Mellon
Babson
In the same boat with different schools. It may be tough seeing all of them in a week. I would think that your choices are to fly into DC or Boston. If Boston, you can fit 2 of the 3 Boston schools in one day (Monday) and then try to visit one more the next day (Tuesday) and then drive or train to New Haven but I don’t think you’ll be able to get there in time for afternoon tour though check the schedule to make sure. Easy to train from New Haven to NYC for NYU and Columbia which are easy to do in one day. (Taxis or Uber can get you around NYC.) (Wednesday or Thursday) Drive or train to Philadelphia and spend your day at Penn. (Thursday or Friday) Cannot do Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon in one day. Maybe consider JHU and Georgetown for one day or Carnegie Mellon on Friday and see if you can tour Georgetown on Saturday and then fly home. You can easily take the train from Boston to New Haven to NYC to Philadelphia to Baltimore to DC (all Amtrak Northeast Corridor) but Pittsburgh is out of the way.
The outlier is Carnegie Mellon - it is a 5 hour drive west from Philadelphia (Penn) and you don’t have any schools on your list on the way. It is also in the opposite direction of everywhere else you want to be. If you do go, then plan on an extra two days of travel between the Philadelphia and DC legs of your trip.
You could fly in to Boston and out of DC, renting a car in Boston and then dropping it off at the airport in DC. Check around - some car rental companies car a fairly nominal fee for doing this. We are doing something similar for a Midwest trip in February and it is costing us $46 to pick up a car in Cleveland and drop it off in Detroit.
If you fly into Boston and out of DC, then you can go to the schools in the following order:
Arrive Boston Day 1
Day 2 morning Boston University
Day 2 afternoon MIT
Day 3 Babson
Then drive to New Haven that afternoon
Day 4 Yale
Then drive to New York City that afternoon; the next day, take the subway to visit schools and retrieve the car later
Day 5 morning Columbia
Day 6 afternoon NYC
Then drive to Philadelphia
Day 7 Penn
Then drive to DC
Day 8 Georgetown
Hope that helps!
You rock! this is very helpful and close to what I thought I would do… thank you!
I think @albclemom proposes a great itinerary, but I would @uesmomof2’ s mode of transportation, i.e. Amtrak, given that you quite understandably prefer not to drive/park in Boston, New York, Philly and DC. As a DC-area resident myself, I would definitely leave the car at home for that trip.
Completely agree that Carnegie-Mellon doesn’t sound feasible in the time allotted. Even Georgetown may be a bit of a stretch, particularly if there are no other DC or Baltimore schools of interest.
Wow, that’s a lot of schools! It’s definitely feasible but I agree with everyone else. Carnegie Mellon is kind of the odd man out. Georgetown isn’t a stretch if you start in DC and work your way up the coast.
Either renting a car, riding Amtrak, or taking a bus between the different cities (Philadelphia, NYC, Boston etc.) would work depending on your budget and your desired comfort level. You’ll have to probably rent a car at some point to transport yourself between hotels/restaurants/colleges/any sightseeing you wish to do, unless taking a taxi is something you’re interested in. Not sure how much cab rates go for these days…
Here’s a reasonable itinerary (similar to @albclemom but backwards)
Fly in to DC, spend the night, get acclimated
Visit Georgetown for the whole day and walk around DC
Take a bus/train/rented car to Philadelphia to visit UPenn/spend the day there.
Head up to NYC to visit NYU and Columbia. You can use the subway to get around NYC.
Either spend the night in NYC and shoot up to New Haven in the morning to visit Yale in the afternoon or drive straight up to New Haven, spend the night and visit Yale in the morning. (It’s only like a two hours drive)
Shoot up to Boston to do a roundhouse visit of MIT, Boston U, and Babson (all right around each other) The T is Boston’s version of the Subway. You might have to put one of these schools on the last day because I don’t know if you could swing all three in one day.
Fly out of Logan International and go home.
I know it seems hectic but when you consider the proximity of these cities to one another (1-2 hours approx. DC to Philly is the farthest, about 3 hours) it doesn’t seem that bad! Good luck with your trip and I hope you have a good time visiting these schools.
We did a similar trip by Amtrak. I would attempt no more than two schools in a given day, and no more than one city per day.
You can start on either end - check out the difference in flights/cost for travel if it matters where you fly in/out.
Boston if you plan for an early am arrival you should be able to check into hotel, drop your bags and see one school the first afternoon and two schools on day 2.
New Haven (this New Haven to Boston stretch is longer than I anticipated on the Amtrak) for day 3
Head to NYC that evening
You can do NYU and Columbia on the same day (day 4)
Amtrak down to Philly - Penn is super close to the train station - walking distance (day 5)
Train to DC that evening and spend the final day at Georgetown. (day 6)
If you have an extra day or two to pad the schedule, I would strongly suggest visiting a museum or landmark in each city. In Boston, the Freedom Trail is a series of landmarks, you can walk about a mile and see lots of cool historical stuff for free. New Haven has little other than Yale to visit, but they have great pizza (we took recommendations and tried Frank Pepe’s white clam pizza) . In NYC you can see a museum or show if you take some extra time, if not at least visit central park or see the lights of Times Square at night. Walk to a monument in DC. With the time and expense of this much travel, I think its worthwhile to feel like you “saw something” and not just the inside of a bunch of admissions suites and college tours. We ended up doing 2 of these marathon tours last year, and those are some cherished memories of the brief touristy things I did with the kiddo.
I did a very similar college visit your last spring break. I visited MIT, Harvard, Brown, Yale, NYU, Columbia, Penn and Swarthmore (outside of Philadelphia). Flew into Boston Logan and visited MIT and Harvard the next day. Took a train to Providence (about 45 minutes) and visited Brown. Next, a train to New Haven, then NYC, and finally Philly. I highly recommend taking the Amtrak and taking advantage of the local public transportation system (I’m thinking of the train in Philly). Amtrak worked out to be much cheaper and quicker than renting a car would have been, and definitely less stressful. If you have any questions, PM me and I can give you more specific details and advice. Good luck with your planning.
Doing the 3 Boston schools in one day would be very tough, if not impossible. You’ll also want to think about dealing with commuter traffic, as many of your schools are in or around major cities where you’ll encounter rush hour tie-ups.
I think it would be tough to do these schools in a week without a car. For instance, Babson is in Wellesley 30-45 minutes from Boston or Cambridge. While there is a commuter train out to Wellesley it doesn’t go near Babson. You’d have to do a cab or Uber, and that adds time to your itinerary, as well as making it impossible to explore the town or go anywhere but on campus for lunch.
Amtrack is a good option if you have the time, but again, it adds time to the itinerary. Albeclemon’s itinerary seems tight (as any itinerary covering this many schools in a week would have to be) but doable.
The Megabus is also an option. www.megabus.com. It’s comfortable, inexpensive, has wifi and power outlets, and makes very few stops, so it’s comparable to driving yourself.
I also agree about taking Amtrak, but there are also commuter railroads that overlap for parts of the trip. Amtrak is faster than they are, except for 1 segment: New Haven-NYC. I’d take Metro-North (http://www.mta.info) for that since it’ll arrive in Grand Central and since you don’t really have to buy a ticket in advance.
The train overall will be faster than driving–particularly between Boston and New Haven, and driving in East Coast metro areas is a challenge, to put it lightly.
Suggestion here: make Georgetown a separate weekend - and add George Washington to your list. If you spend a half day at Georgetown, then walk around the neighborhood which is very upscale, add some sightseeing, check out GW the next day, more walking around the downtown (GW is an urban school like NYU) and then come back. It will prevent all those schools from blurring in your mind and causing tour burn-out. And no, you don’t want a car for either school - public transportation works just fine.
Since you won’t have much time at each school, do your homework first. In other words, for each school, make a list of specific things to look for at each school that can only be ascertained on a visit (as opposed to being readily available on their web sites). Bring those lists with you, and take notes of your observations while you are visiting. Consider also whether each school will be in session (as opposed to spring break) on each day of visit.