<p>It’s convenient to be able to drive stuff out to the school which we can (but with a 6 to 7 hour dirve). Most holidays son flies - flying always comes with the dangers of canceled or missed flights. It’s foggy today in NY and flights are delayed for hours. I do think it’s nice to get to know another part of the country. But if you love the far-away school I wouldn’t hesitate to go there. Especially if access to an airport is easy and the flights are direct.</p>
<p>Two of my Ds went to colleges that were a very long drive (8hrs+) or a plane ride away, and three are at a college where they are close enough that, although they live on campus, they can conceivably come home for dinner if they feel like it. It’s nice having them close, even though they don’t even come home every weekend, let alone for dinner on a weeknight. The possibility of being able to do that, to visit when you want (in either direction), and not have to worry about transportation issues is great. My older two Ds say now that they wish they’d had that opportunity when they were in college. Travel issues are a pain, regardless of how close you are to an airport, how frequently there are flights, etc., particularly in winter weather. While it wouldn’t be, and wasn’t, the main issue in determining where to go to college for my Ds, it definitely IS an issue that should be considered, in my opinion. A student can develop independence and self-reliance whether they’re 30 or 3000 miles away from home.</p>
<p>We live in the SF Bay Area. I have one daughter in school in Portland,Oregon, 11 hours driving (which we only do at the beginnning and end of semesters) and about 1 1/2 hours flight time. My other daughter just started this year at UCLA, about 7 hours driving, and about an hour flight time. Both are very close to major airports and we have 3 major airports within 1 1?2 hours of us. I really feel the distance has been just about right. Yes, sometimes the travel thing can be a headache but they both wanted to go to school in a place that was new, different and a bit of a distance. Neither wanted to go across the country.These days with air travel and keeping in touch with email, etc. I don’t think distance should really be a big deciding factor. Visit the schools again and pick the one that really feels right to you. Pretend they are all the same distance from home. Then which would you pick? I feel it’s more inmportant to pick the right school than to have 1 or 7 hours be a deciding factor. This would be different if you were talking 3000 miles and a 5 hour flight but you are not.</p>
<p>This is so interesting and informative!</p>
<p>What is waking me up in the middle of the night, lately (other than nightmares about college funding!) is that I researched schools & encouraged my son to apply to a number of colleges far away (where geographic diversity & an emphasis on test scores could help him gain admission). Now that he’s in, I’m thinking “a little knowledge can be dangerous” and wondering why I encouraged this. </p>
<p>Although, son did say his original first choice school was on the opposite coast, so maybe I can’t totally blame myself. Still feeling sad/scared thinking about him going to school 1200 miles & a plane flight away. He’s young for his grade & still seems vulnerable.</p>
<p>I’d enjoy hearing other parents’/students’ perspectives on the distance issue…</p>
<p>I’m in California. My s went to school 6 hours away, beautiful drive, easy flight.
My d went further away. The distance wasn’t the problem. The easy access to an airport was. She would have to fly in a little plane to get to a major airport and then home. It was difficult for her, so she transfered and is happy to be in our hometown (although NOT living at home). For my s, he was glad he was away, but he was also glad that it was easy to come home (and not too expensive).</p>
<p>My youngest will be attending school about an hour and a half away. That’s nice for a mom!</p>
<p>Having my D on the opposite coast has been really good for our relationship. I can’t hover, and she can’t depend on me. I’ve been flying out there once or twice a semester to visit. It’s a long flight, but there are lots of non-stops from here to there and once I get there it’s a short ride to the campus. The extra cost of travel is a factor to consider if your budget is tight.</p>
<p>That being said, I’m looking forward to having my son just an hour away and near my parents. I can pop down there, visit them, and we can all get together for dinner.</p>
<p>Be sure to factor the following into the time of the flight itself: travel to airport, checking in 2 hours ahead of flight, hanging around in the airport waiting, the flight, getting through baggage/airport, travel from airport home. When you add up all the time on both ends, a one hour flight can turn out to be a long day.</p>
<p>One of my kids is relatively close by (within three hours) just by the fact that he liked that particular college. I suspect that he would have picked the school no matter where it was. We treat it as if he is anywhere in the country; we visit only on parent weekends and he comes home only on regular holidays. Keep in mind that many students that go to school not too far from home wind up spending time abroad for a semester or two (and traveling) which faciliates different geographical experiences.</p>
<p>D went to school on the Other Coast. Others have captured the downside about travel time, connections, Thanksgiving, etc. Positives outweighed it all. She and we would do it again.</p>
<p>In the summer between 8th & 9th grade when the prospect of college was rearing its head, D said, “Dad, I want to go to school in a different part of the country, preferably New England. I want to go where there’s a different culture, a different sense of history. I don’t want it to be medieval times when you’re born, grow up, get married, have kids, and die in the same small village.”</p>
<p>Funny, but I’d never envisioned Los Angeles County as Anitevka before. Live and learn.</p>
<p>I do want to second TheDad. I mentioned a lot of negatives but I do think the positives outweighed them. I also think that the culture of the school matters as well as the distance. For example, S1 went to a top public university half an hour away. Because so many students were in-state and local, the dorms tended to empty out during the weekend and he came home most weekends for at least part of the weekend the first year. Who wants to stay in an empty dorm? S2 is an hour away but we see him maybe once a year more than DD who went across the country. That’s in large part because he attends an LAC that draws kids from all over the country and the world and no one leaves on the weekend. So even though he lives nearby, it’s as if he’s far away. The only exception is that he will be able to come home for Passover this Spring. That said, for me, the psychological difference is huge. Knowing he is an hour away by car versus a full day away by plane is a completely different experience. We talked about it recently and I noted that even though I don’t actually see him more than I saw his sister, knowing that I can see him anytime makes me feel a lot more relaxed.</p>
<p>I would agree with all the posters who said that distance and ease of traveling to the airports is a factor. If you’re near an airport at both ends, then the flight time isn’t a big deal. I would consider the following factors:
- If you’re homesick, how easy is it to get home?
- How often will you be able to come home or have your parents visit? Look at costs, vacations, schedules, parents’ ability to take off work. Figure out how often you’ll be able to see each other. Can you live with that?
- Parents: If there’s any sort of emergency, can you get there quickly?
- S is very independent, but sometimes misses home and misses this part of the country. On the positive side, he’s made great friends and has had some experiences that he wouldn’t have around here. We’re jealous when it’s cold and rainy here, and he’s playing golf in 80 degree weather! :-)</p>
<p>I confess that I am a curmudgeon with respect to homesickness. "With your shield or upon it. " Or, as with Cortez, there are times to burn your ships behind you.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how pleasing it is to watch my D be as self-reliant and self-propelled as she is, making arrangements when she needs to. Since her desired career area is focused on the East Coast, it’s a good thing she picked up the skills in college. </p>
<p>I wonder about one of her early roommates from the Nutmeg State, a young woman whose mom came to pick her up every weekend but not leaving until she’d cleaned her D’s half of the dorm room. Only half of a college education takes place inside the classroom.</p>
<p>My kids are both in a school that is a 5+ hour plane ride from our home. It is in LA, which has a climate they are comfortable with and is only a short 30+ minute shuttle from the airport. Neither wanted to attend in-state flagship U, so that wasn’t an option. We supported their choice and are glad they are both happy there.</p>
<p>I would agree that keeping in contact is the main thing most of us parents would like. It is also nice for us that we have great friends in LA who have agreed to be the emergency contact if the school needs someone (so far have not been needed).</p>
<p>We really feel the students grow by being out-of-state. In our extended family, 6 of the 7 of us went far from home 5+ to 12+ hours by plane from home for grad school. Two even bought homes and started families where they were doing their residencies and internships. All 7 of us ended up returning to HI to raise our families and have our professional careers, no matter where we went to grad school or where me met our loved ones or where their families were.</p>
<p>No one can know how the future will arrange itself. One never knows where opportunities will take you, if you are open to the possibilities–you must make the best choices based on what you now know. Your mom and dad will adjust (that is our job as parents)–this is about YOU and your choices.</p>
<p>Personally, a long distance for us is not an option because of flight costs. That gives me an eight hour radius in the car. Considering I live smack dab in the middle of the east coast, my radius stretches as far north as Boston and as far south as the middle of North Carolina - as well as as far west as West Virginia. I really want to go to school in DC, which is only about an hour and a half away (even less if I were to take the metro to the suburbs and meet my mom halfway).</p>
<p>Actually, depending on the merit and other aid a school awards, flight costs can be rather trivial compared with the remaining costs of a $50K/year education. It is good to keep your mind and options open. It’s great if the geographic area where a student wants to attend co-incides with other considerations.</p>
<p>For example, a friend’s S was offered a FULL-TUITION scholarship at either of 2 excellent Us, which makes his cost of attending college significantly lower than private HS, even with airfares. All his family pays is room, board, & books.</p>
<p>Distance can be a problem. If you cannot get direct easy flights to your college and it is not a drivable distance, it can be costlier and more of a hassle to go back and forth. For some, it is a non issue. For others, it is an issue. Yes, it CAN be a big issue. I know some kids who were in accidents, became seriously ill, got into trouble, and there were tortuous hours before the parent could arrive on the scene. So there is that disadvantage when you can’t just hop in the car and get there within a few hours. Just recently, friends had just had a few drinks at their younger child’s fund raising dinner when they got a call that their college son was in an automobile accident and in the hospital. This was during the Natasha Richardson news blitz, so you can imagine how the parents were feeling when they were told that their son had been knocked unconscious and had no memory of the accident. The hospital suspected a concussion. The parents raced off to the hospital where their son was, which was less than 4 hours away.</p>
<p>If the same thing had happened to us, we would not have been able to be with our son for another 12-24 hours as he is cross country from us and there are no direct flights from here to there. We would have had to take the first flight out that morning, rented a car and driven about 90 miles to get to his college town unless we could get a connection to get us there faster. Not a reassuring thought for a parent.</p>
<p>But he wanted to go to the college, and this was one of the negatives that we listed for that option. It still won out. Had there been a school closer with the same offering as his college, we would have pushed for him to go there. The bulk of the colleges on his list were within 4 hours of home, some within the hour. But when the dust cleared, this was his choice.</p>
<p>I generally advise students to go as far away from home as possible, other things being comparable, because that results in a lot of personal growth for the student. The relationship with the parents will still last for many decades, but it can be very good for the student to be farther away.</p>
<p>My son called me up at the office several weeks ago and told me that he couldn’t find his keys and that he thought that they were in his apartment. I was there in twenty minutes and he got his keys out of his apartment.</p>
<p>His internship this summer will be four to five hours away so he will be more on his own there.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hopefully, the relationship will last for decades but I do think it’s important for families to weigh the fact that a lot can happen in four years and that the student won’t be able to easily get back in a crisis. I’ve known families where, during the college years, major medical crises occurred in a parent’s life. It’s not a reason to not go away, but I don’t think anyone should presume that things won’t happen during those four years.</p>
<p>Yes, things happen, but for our family, that was not a sufficient reason to weigh in deciding where our kids should consider attending college. Our parents didn’t have us weigh that when we chose our colleges & grad schools either. Among us, that spanned 19 years or so that one or more of us was a 5+ to 12 hour plane ride from home with 9 of us in the family. NONE of us ended up having a major medical crisis during those 19 years.</p>
<p>My kids & I have had some significant medical crises and issues over the past 9 years, but while we took that into consideration and planned as best we could weighing that, we still encouraged them to follow their dreams, no matter how many hours by plane it was from our home. We will continue to encourage them and have just strongly encouraged our S to consider taking a summer internship that will be in VA–14+ hours by plane from our home. This MAY lead to a possible future job offer clear across the country from us in HI.</p>