@CTDramaMom, I could find no love or like for it, hence why the kid has a car there. :)) She can drive herself home.
We are 22 hours by car from d’s front door, but she has been “adopted” by the parents of several of her more locally-based Western Michigan MT classmates, so we have no worries about emergencies. Her friend’s families are awesome and very supportive, including picking her up at the Chicago airport and driving her back to school when she got stranded on her way back to school after winter break and Kalamazoo airport was snowed in by a blizzard. I think most “theatre families” naturally help each other out.
My son has stomach flu right now, high fever, stomach (and lower) issues, 1000 miles away and one day away from opening night…distance is hard. We’re flying out tomorrow (for the show, not the flu)…will be good to see him.
@Jkellynh17 - hugs to you and to him. Hope he feels better and kills it this weekend!!
Thank you @toowonderful!
@GSOMTMom look, I’m letting mine move off campus, aren’t I? That’s as cray-cray as I’m getting for now LOL. Where does she park?
Well, London has been quite difficult in that regard. But on the flip side, your kid does have to learn to be very resilient… This is a good example of knowing what is right for your own kid and your own family. There is no one right way.
Going back to the OP’s original question about hidden out-of-state costs though-- I think we’re talking about two different costs: Financial and Emotional. They are intertwined and sometimes very personal and individual.
In some situations the financial benefits of out of state are very clear. Like @halflokum says, the difference may be tens of thousands less than a closer college, so that you could fly tons of times and still not put a dent on the difference. In other cases, the finances are a bit more tricky. My D at Northwestern had generous need based grants that made her tuition/room/board costs less than our in-state university, but not tens of thousands. So you have to ask if it’s worth it to you educationally to be at a college you love that’s far away. For her it was. But also, she was mature going in (she started college at age 20).
I think the biggest ‘unexpected costs" are transportation costs. This is because it is tied into emotionally as well as medical. How essential is it to visit the shows? fly the kid home? visit? Flying can range from fairly inexpensive to pretty exorbitant depending on where you live & where the college is. If you visit, how expensive are hotels/motels etc? Can you stay with friends/relatives? In one of my kid’s cases, it turned out he needed to drive home many times for unexpected medical reasons, but he didnt’ own a car, and for medical reasons, couldn’t easily fly on a plane. I thus found myself spending much more on car rentals/transportation costs than I’d originally budgeted (adding up to what in retrospect would have been better used in buying a used car outright).
A lot of kids have ongoing medical conditions that make distance harder. Sometimes the medical conditions can be pretty intense. You may decide to do a distant school but be sure to budget in a lot of airfare just in case, and to know you can hop in a car and get there just in case. Again this is personal.
Finally, I have to say having done this 5 times now (!) that the students change an awful lot from 17 to 22. A kid who thinks she/he couldn’t possibly live more than an hour away may in time turn into the kid who lives abroad for a year quite happily. Other kids who think they will be totally fine far away turn out to be homesick. It’s very hard to predict how your kid will be with the distance; honestly a lot of times you just have to take a leap of faith and try.
Facetime and texting are awesome though, I’ll tell you.
@Jkellynj17, hope he feels better soon. I bet it’ll be really nice to see him.
As for hidden OOS costs, medical situations were mentioned but not certain if medical insurance was. That is something to check upon. Without getting into the politics side of it, between Obamacare and possible replacements you need to make sure you have medical insurance that works for you out of state. That was a challenge for us a little early on with our OOS kid. Recommend you check with insurance carrier and medical facilities at the school.