<p>I have narrowed my college decision to three schools. One which is relatively close, one that is about a 6 hour drive and one that would require air travel.</p>
<p>My mom is more concerned about this than I am. If all other things are equal, do you think this factor should play a big role in the final decision?</p>
<p>For those of you who were in this kind of situation, what are your thoughts?</p>
<p>Well, your perspective is as the student and mine is as the mom so I’m not sure this will help or not. I had one who was 30 minutes away, one who is a solid hour away and one who was 12 hours away, including an air flight, from door to door – assuming the plane took off and landed on time. Three hours on the ground to the airport, waiting time, flying time, driving time home. Closer is easier, no doubt about it. You save almost two days on every vacation that you lose traveling when you go far away. Shipping, flying and so forth are a hassle. But you do get a feel for a different part of the country being far away and it does probably create more independence and self-reliance. Just knowing that mom can’t drive over and help you out if you get sick or homesick, etc. forces you to grow up in a different way I think. When college is over, you will have lived somewhere else for four years and have a better idea of what appeals to you and what doesn’t about that area and about your own home area. My DD has a very different perspective on our west-coast city, now that she has lived on the east coast. She also gained an independence that she felt her friends who were closer to home did not. But there is a lot of extra hassle that isn’t there when you can just throw your stuff in the car and drive to campus. Good luck.</p>
<p>Distance was part of my daughter’s search strategy. 
No, I’m not a terrible mom (or so I hope anyway), but she really wants to try a part of the country very different than home. Which I think is great. There’s no better time to experience a different part of the world than when you’re young & unfettered.</p>
<p>I’m definitely counting on email, IM and Skype to help close the distance, though.</p>
<p>Here’s another mom perspective.</p>
<p>One was 3 states away in 3.5 driving hours; one was in the next state in 4.5-5 driving hours; one on the opposite coast.
We live ~15 minutes from a major airport, child’s school is ~15 minutes from major airport. </p>
<p>Except for the increased cost of flying (but we use FF miles for almost all trips), the impact is negligible.</p>
<p>The advances in technology from #1 to #3 have shortened the ‘distance’.</p>
<p>We have no regrets.</p>
<p>Another parent input:</p>
<p>Life is filled with so many choices, that I thought I’d throw in this story. Sometimes the decision to go across the country to study can have unexpected consequences.</p>
<p>A very close friend’s son went to a private U several states away. He fell in love and is now engaged. The fiance’s family lives in the area, and his future wife doesn’t want to leave. He was also recruited by a local firm. So, his move to college has hugely afftected the direction of his life. It’s a happy event and one he freely chose, but one they never even considered. Fortunately for him, he likes the city and they will have the financial ability to travel back see his family…</p>
<p>Distance is an issue if you want to go home on a regular basis. It is also a factor in cost to attend. My older D benefits from us being able to be more hands on. My younger kids are more independent.</p>
<p>My D and S are also in performance related majors, so being able to see their performances is a plus for us, and provides moral support for them. My youngest D is in an academic major, so that is not an issue.</p>
<p>So, if you like to go home for long weekends, reading periods, etc, then consider the closer school. There is not much difference between 6 hour drive and flight for you, other than cost.</p>
<p>My D chose a school nearly 300 miles away from home. Same state, but very different region. She wanted to be a good distance away, but not too far. We did not put geoegraphical restrictions on her search and in fact she was accepted to schools further away. However H and I are pleased that she’s within easy driving distance (under 5 hrs), with decent Amtrak service available. Even so, she won’t come home for Easter because she doesn’t have extra time off and travel time would eat up the entire weekend.</p>
<p>I went to Michigan State, out of state and 700 miles from home (New Jersey). Chose it in large part to experience a different part of the country and was extremely glad that I had that experience (very positive BTW). Only traveled by plane, which limited how often I went home (not at Thanksgiving or Easter). Shipped trunk and other gear both ways at either end of the school year, not such a big deal.</p>
<p>There was a thread written by a mom around Christmas about her son’s long journey back home for the holidays. His school was a small rural LAC (might have been Williams College) and home was in Oregon. Bad weather, flight cancellations, missed connections, took up a large fraction of his Christmas break. Reading that thread made me realize that while I don’t want to cling to my daughter, it would be nice if she didn’t have to make too many land and air connections to get home.</p>
<p>Someone might be able to provide the link, I wasn’t able to find it.</p>
<p>My son ended up choosing a school that is a 7-8 hr. drive away. He did not have a car his freshman year, so travel home required either a bus drive or a plane ticket. The bus schedule turned out to be awful, so he flew home on major breaks, but it was both an expense and a hassle, since we are two hours away from an airport. Now that he has a car at school, he can drive himself back and the distance is not such a factor, since he would not be coming back except at major breaks anyway.</p>
<p>To second vicariousparent’s anecdote: a friend of my son goes to an East Coast school. Getting back here requires a bus ride at his end and then two flights. This year it took him several DAYS to get back home at Christmas, as flights were canceled and re-routed and canceled again due to weather. Then, the final flight ended up in a different city than his parents had gone to to pick him up. (Other side of the state.) The luggage never made it here. At that point, I was glad son stayed in the middle of the country.</p>
<p>This is from a Dad’s perspective.</p>
<p>We live in a college town (Ann Arbor), yet my S chose to go to a school 3 flying hours away, and I totally agree with his decision. I like to think of college as a time to “practice” being an adult. You’re in a new environment with no one to look after you but yourself, but you have the structure of school to build your responsibilities around. You have to handle your study time, your play time along with feeding yourself and doing the laundry.</p>
<p>Many of my S’s classmates stayed in town. It seemed to take them a year longer to get their arms around the responsibilities of being on their own, nearly 4 years later, some still haven’t figured it out. It’s just too easy to bop home and get a meal and some clean clothes. Just as disappointing, they fell into the trap of hanging with all of their high school buddies. As mimk6 said, one of the great things about college is the variety of perspectives you’re exposed to, not just the people but also the regional perspectives.</p>
<p>Ultimately this may be about your mom being able to let go. It’s not that she’s worried about you handling it, it’s about her not quite being ready to give up her job of being close by to take care of you. Even though I knew my son would handle it, it was still a tough transition. And I promise you it’ll be especially hard the first time you’re laid up with the flu or when a blizzard or hurricane or heat wave blasts your campus.</p>
<p>I say go to the place you’re most excited about. Don’t let distance be too big a factor, (remember a 6 hour drive is about the same travel time as a 3 hour flight).</p>
<p>Good Luck.</p>
<p>I love the fact our D1 is only 3.5 hr drive away. She comes home when she needs to, and we get to see some of her performances. We don’t stress on how she’ll get home on holidays. A few times when she got very sick we were able to pick her up to bring her home. We didn’t think distance was going to be an issue (benefit in our case) until she started college. If all else being equal I would chose a school that’s closer to home. I think there is plenty of time when you’ll be away from your parents.</p>
<p>We’re on the West Coast. Our D went to college on the East Coast. She never came home for Thanksgiving or for spring break during any of the years she was at college. Plus side: she took trips during Thanksgiving/spring break or went home with East Coast roommates. Down side: she didn’t see any family for 4-5 months; she didn’t want to take any summer internships that weren’t near home, which cut down her prospects alot.</p>
<p>How easy is it to get to the school form the nearest airport? Is there an inexpensive shuttle or public transportation or does one have to rely on hitching a ride with someone or an expensive taxi? How much does typical airfare run? Are there direct flights? Are there daily flights between the two airports? If you can’t go home and have to vacate the dorms during short breaks, where would you stay? Knowing the answer to these questions will help in making the decision.</p>
<p>I’m feeling the distance right now. Just got e-mail from son about possibly shortening his Passover trip, as classes start the day of Sedars, and he will be a TA for first time. I haven’t had time to check on how expensive an airline ticket change could be.</p>
<p>Still, I know my S needs to live in Cambridge or Ca for research, to pursue his dreams.</p>
<p>The location of the college matters a lot in terms of flights. There is a huge difference between being a short bus or train ride away from a major airport with several flights a day to your home city, and being either hours away from the airport and/or depending on one dinky airline providing a connecting flight to another airport. Huge difference between being able to fly non-stop and having to depend on connecting flights. Once my daughter waited for hours and hours (after days and days of finals) at an airport only to finally find out the flight would be cancelled due to weather (as opposed to delayed). Of course, the dorms were closed and so she scrounged around for a friend to stay with. Next day caught the first leg of the connecting flight to the next city and then there was some kind of snafu there that, all in all, made it take about two days to get home. And that, I will say, was the last connecting flight. The remainder of college involved long trips on the ground to get to an airport that had non-stop flights. So consider the kind of flights and the proximity of the airport.</p>
<p>This is so helpful. Thank you so much. I do think part of this issue is that my mom is sad about my leaving. My dad has more of “wherever you think you’ll be happy is fine with me” attitude. </p>
<p>The flying school is from a school with easy access to the airport, with many, many flight options. It’s probably one of the easiest flights you can take from the airport nearest me.</p>
<p>I’ll be re-visiting the schools again over spring break and I’m trying to have it be a clean slate - and then make my decision from the place where I feel the best.</p>
<p>If you keep in good contact with your mother during your college fall, it would do a lot to alleviate her anxiety and loneliness. Distance is less a problem than non-communication.</p>
<p>To piggyback onto mimk6’s point about how easy it is to get a direct flight, it’s also important to have a flexible airline. I can’t emphasize enough how helpful it was when our daughter was in College to be able to make flight arrangements early and for a good price and know that we could change it without a penalty later. Yay, Southwest airlines!</p>
<p>Our son is at a College six hours away in southwest Virginia. While the topography is pretty similar to our area of PA, the accent and lifestyle is different enough to make his experience interesting. I’m not sure you really have to go across the country to get a new experience. Even changing from urban to rural or vice-versa would do it.</p>
<p>My son went to college less than an hour’s drive from home and is now attending graduate school on the other side of the country (easy travel to major airports on both ends of the trip).</p>
<p>My daughter attends college a 7-hour drive from home. She travels home for breaks by charter bus, but traveling at any other time would be awkward (probably involving flying with a change of planes to get anywhere). Moreover, her college is in an area that is heavily affected by winter weather, which can make travel more difficult. In addition, I have to give up at least one vacation day and pay for a hotel room for myself at the beginning and end of every school year because my middle-aged body can’t tolerate 14 hours in a car in one day, but picking her up and dropping her off is easier and cheaper than having her go to school by mass transit and shipping all her stuff.</p>
<p>My daughter’s situation is of far more concern to me than my son’s. Fortunately, she is moving off-campus next year, so I don’t have to worry anymore about her being stranded in the college community due to winter weather and having the dorms close while she has nowhere else to go. However, she is approaching the time in her college career when she may have to leave her isolated campus for internship or job interviews, which will be time-consuming and involve a lot of missed classes, and could also involve winter weather travel problems. </p>
<p>From a strictly travel-related point of view, I wish she were somewhere else. Not necessarily closer to home, just with better access to a major travel hub.</p>
<p>I think Mimk6 summarized things nicely. D half-way across the country, but just twenty minutes from a major airport which simplifies travel greatly. She comes home for Thanksgiving and Christmas (though not Spring Break). Her life away from home has been an important part of her development into adulthood. YMMV of course.</p>