I’m curious about this because I have a friend (really!) whose daughter is a senior in high school and whose financial situation is so difficult that it seems that travel costs might have to be among the crucial factors when the daughter picks a school to attend. As for my daughters, we had just enough money that travel costs weren’t the deciding factor, but I will say that those airfares from the Midwest to Southern California did start to add up and I don’t really want to know how much we ended up spending on travel over her four years. (Oh, and of course, she loves California and has settled there post-college.) My other daughter is in a college in a neighboring state, and although we did not restrict her choice of locations, travel costs have been significantly lower for her. I welcome your thoughts and speculation!
Our 3 kids were all accepted to OOS schools - but all wound up with schools within 1 hour drive of home - and I think both parents and kids benefited. Me and wife got to go watch the kids in sports and plays, and kids got to occasionally get taken out to lunch or dinner. We never “just stopped by” - it was understood that even though the kids were close in distance and time - they were a world away in responsibility and focus.
Me and wife feel very fortunate it worked out that they chose local area schools.
My kids all wanted to get out of the immediate area, just to be in something new and fresh. We did take airfare into account and estimated the cost of 5 round trip tickets for freshman year, including two for a parent. We tend to have a lot of frequent flyer miles and I keep track of them meticulously, so I figured $1500 for the one furthest away from home (more than a 24 hour drive). It turned out to cost double that, as we all went to visit, making some trips family visits, and my son ended coming home more than planned. Not to mention the cost of hotels, meals, rental cars, expenses when we came to visit.
I got reamed this year with a streak of deaths. This son is not as far away, but a direct flight is definitely the fastest way home. He flew home for two funerals, Thanksgiving and CHristmas, and for the final funeral got a ride here and back. He isn’t coming home for spring break, however, nor did he come home last summer, so I slightly over $1500 for plane tickets, and more costs for the driving/riding shares.
IF you are on a budget, yes, you should estimate travel costs and add at least two trips unplanned in there, because things can happen.
I wanted my kids to go away and see another part of the country. One went 1000 miles away (Midwest to east). One stayed within an hour of home. I do have to confess logistics were a lot easier with the “closer” one.
We have. My rule was no apps to schools that can’t be gotten to by car in a day. “Day” was a pretty loose term though, one of them is 15 hours’ drive and no direct flights.
D doesn’t want anything too close, she’s into places about 6+ hours away.
If she were madly in love with a great fit on the west coast or whatever I’d have considered it but her list of closer-than-that schools was rather long anyway.
Even with schools 6-9-12 hours away, I personally favor those with close friends or family nearby. In most cases there is that.
And yes, money has a lot to do with this. If trans-continental/trans-ocean flights at peak periods were no biggie for me, the sky would have been the limit.
…I do know people who have imposed a 3 hour drive rule (for ease of weekend trips home, I’m told), in fact a lot of people like that. We’re in a populous state so that leaves a lot of options, but i wouldn’t have gone that far even if I wanted to.
None of my siblings or I went home all that often after our freshman year, whether we went to college close or not. I’ve seen that to be the case with most kids I know. And my son was in Dubai or somewhere for his 19th birthday so, I’m not going to impose a distance restriction on my remaining college-bound kid.
She intends to go to school in the south-we are in Seattle. We have a credit card that gives us airline points and once a year we get a buy 1, get one RT for $99 so I think we’ll be good. D knows that going far away she won’t get to come home whenever she wants. But my extended family is a day’s drive away so if she really needed to get away and be with family there’s that. I’m just hoping she doesn’t keep to her plan to go live in Africa for 5 years!
We asked our kids to apply to,schools within a three hour drive from home…or within an hour of a close friend or relative. We have a big family and they are all over the world. One kid went two hours from home. The other went 3000 miles from home, but 5 minutes to a close friend and near a gaggle of relatives. For the kiddo who chose the opposite coast, she knew going in that we would fly her home for the Christmas break, and summer. For thanksgiving and the spring break, she went to relatives near her school.
Despite all of our great in state options (VA), both of mine wanted to go further afield. One would up in a large city 4 1/2 hours from home. Lots of good transportation options, so not a problem getting to and from. S is 10+ hours away and flies home on breaks.
Older son just wanted the best computer science department. We’re in NY he ended up in Pittsburgh for college and spent most of his summers in CA and now works in CA. Younger son preferred staying on the East Coast. He ended up deciding between Chicago (too far to drive) and Boston (3.5 hours away and lots of relatives in the area). I don’t think the location was the deciding factor, but it was nice to be able to pick him up and see him and/or stay with family. Of course he spent two semesters plus part of one summer in Jordan - so some of the time he was really, really far away!
Personally I do think college is a good time to explore a different part of the country - but there are fields where that may make it considerably easier to stay in that area for your first job as well.
We never put distance restrictions on our kids but financial restrictions were in place. We found that with merit scholarships and the programs our kids were looking for that OOS schools beat our in state flagship in every instance. One ended up 3ish hours away near family so that saved us on hotels, etc. Two are about 5 hours away- so we’ve spent more there on gas and hotels. Our senior son’s first choice is over 8 hours away, but what he would save on tuition would more than make up for traveling back and forth over 4 years. We were fortunate that scholarship money was available so that in the long run, even factoring in travel costs we still came out ahead versus more local schools.
When D was applying she decided she didn’t want to go so far away that she would have to fly to get home so within driving distance was her requirement. Luckily for us her school and our home are both on the Amtrak line. She rides Amtrak to come and go all the time. S’16 has pretty much the same distance requirements.
My kids only applied to one school - about a 10 minute drive from home.
We found it wasn’t even the distance that ran up the cost, it was the “flight hops” that mattered. Neither kid was an easy flight to a major metropolitan area. D1 needed TWO hops to get to the nearest airport every time, and that drove up the cost of tickets. D2 can either go direct to a large airport over an hour from her college, or one hop to the airport 20 minutes from her college. She has almost always done the hop. But both were at colleges that were a great fit. I did fantasize a bit about D2 attending the college 40 minutes from home she got into (probably her 4th choice on her list)… but I know her current college is the right place for her and worth every plane ticket. We are lucky to have the choice.
Location was a big factor in shaping D’s college list. But it wasn’t distance from home that we cared about; it was ease of access to a major airport.
Distance was definitely a factor in D’s decision. We knew that, depending on how far away she went, we would only be able to afford to fly her home at Christmas break and in the summer. She is very independent, and I believe she would have been able to handle that (better than I). We didn’t put any pressure on her to stay closer to home, but we did explain the reality of the situation. Ultimately, she chose a college OOS, but within a couple hours’ drive instead of one over 1000 miles away.
We didn’t have financial restrictions. However our son had medical issues in HS and so we agreed to limit the college search to 5 hours drive. He had surgery in a gap year, which largely seems to have eliminated the problem or meaningfully reduced it, but he went to college an hour and a half away. He is now in grad school on the other coast. He really misses the ability to come home but it is the best place in the world for what he wants to do. He will plan to come home at the end of each quarter.
Our daughter decided to go to school in Canada at a school that was an 8+ hour drive or two flights. However she decided to transfer after her first semester to pursue her career interests and went to a college 40 minutes drive from us. She finished undergrad in 3.5 years and will get her master’s there in 16 months.
Our goal was to find an affordable school for our 3 so we didn’t limit the location or distance from our home for the first. He ended up 6 hours away. Because our oldest ended up out of the blue having medical issues and it was nice that we were able to get to him relatively “fast” when we were needed, we did put a little restriction on our other two, and that was the distance had to be driveable in one day. These two are at the same school 12 hours away right now. They come home for fall break, Christmas and spring break, which is only one less time than their older brother. It does cost a lot more though for plane fare rather than bus fare, but scholarships make this possible for them.
Probably the best way to consider this limitation is to estimate the cost of travel and adjust the cost of each school accordingly. I.e. if a distant school’s net price plus added travel costs is still below that of the local school, then the distant school should be financially viable choice relative to the local school.
Beyond travel costs, also consider convenience. If travel involves a drive or train ride of no more than a few hours, or a non-stop airline flight to an airport that is easily accessible to the college, that is more convenient than having to take a connecting flights to airports that are still not that convenient to get to from the college.
I.e. it is not just a matter of taking a compass and drawing a circle from home. Some more distant schools may be less costly and more convenient than some less distant schools.
Our daughter wanted to go “far away” and experience a different part of the country, and we encouraged her to do that. We did take travel into consideration - not so much the distance, but the cost and convenience. Some of her choices were several hours from a major airport, so travel would require not only air fare but a long bus or train ride. Others had small airports nearby, but flights were limited and required multiple hops. When she’d finally narrowed it down to two choices that she liked equally, it was the cost/convenience of travel that was the deciding factor.