<p>I don't mind staying in the northeast, I have family here and I'll only be a 4 hour drive from home in case of emergency. Also, it'll be my first time away for an extended period, so I don't wanna go far. </p>
<p>Just curious, how did your child convince you?</p>
<p>My daughter has always wanted to go back east to school. We are from Southern California. It is her choice and she worked hard to gain admission to her dream school, so who are we to tell her it is too far from home? We are extremely close and it will be very painful for me for her to be so far, but it is her choice, not mine…</p>
<p>There are only two schools within 500 miles of my location that even offer engineering, and the decent one is 350 miles away (a 6+ hr drive). The next-closest U.S. school is over 2000 miles away. Since there really isn’t any choice other than flying, universities in locations with major airports may actually be the closest options because I can catch a nonstop flight.</p>
<p>My S has applied to some schools in CA and we live on the east coast. Now keep in mind that he was born in CA, so that is some of the lure for him, but I am really ok with him going where ever turns out to be the right school for him. There is no need to convince me, but I know that the majority of parents want their kids within a few hours drive. A direct flight from CA on Alaska Air is 5 hours and $320 when you buy in advance --that’s actually less than him taking Amtrak to upstate NY from here! I have no problem with him going this far if he choses to --I was the exact same independent spirit at his age. I say, let your adult children go! :)</p>
<p>I just always assumed that our kids would apply to the schools that best suited them, without considering distance from home to be a factor. If our last student attends an in-state college it’ll be a function of finances, not a desire to limit the scope of his search.</p>
<p>We are military. With our first, we were living in Europe and he was going to school in US. With over polar flights, there really wasn’t much of a difference. With number two, she is choosing while we still don’t know where we will be living next year- again quite possibly overseas.</p>
<p>I was willing to let my younger son go further than he wanted to go. He felt there were enough good choices on the east coast (plus Chicago.) </p>
<p>Since my parents were in Africa when I was in college, I have to admit the idea of having to be near family is a little foreign to me.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider distance as it can be expensive and/or time consuming to get to further flung places.</p>
<p>My daughter wanted to be far enough way that my H wouldn’t just show up on her doorstep. She knew I wouldn’t - I never just show up anywhere and I don’t like to drive. Her school is about 300 miles away, 7 hours on Amtrak or by bus, no flying (well, there is but it’s an hour to the airport from her school and you have to drive there and the flights aren’t cheap).</p>
<p>H didn’t want her to go away but this school offered the best finaid and merit money.</p>
<p>Direct and reasonably priced flights from the Midwest to the W Coast helped me support one Ds choice of school. Her school is 45 minutes from Seatac, we’re a few hours from O’Hare. If she’d chosen a more remote W coast school, I’d have not been happy. The cost of home visits is significant for someone who spends carefully. I’d rather spend that money on visiting my aged mother in another state a bit more regularly. </p>
<p>Her twin is an hour away, and does it ever simplify life! The issues is that kids at this age are NOT independent. It does help considerably to have her at a LAC, with many kids from afar, rather than a state school, which doesn’t think so much about how to store things in the summer and what happens at holidays if not flying home.</p>
<p>He just told me that he was tired of the arrogant, closed-minded idiots who dominate the “better” schools in the northeast.</p>
<p>He’s very happy at Rice.</p>
<p>We never really thought about distance. We just figured that the kids knew if they were far away they would only be coming home for Christmas. They did go far away and they do only come home for Christmas and summer visits. We miss them but it’s not an overwhelming void in our lives. We had a life before kids were born and we’ll have a life after the kids are independent. They didn’t really need to talk us into anything. </p>
<p>Some kids like and need to be able to come home now and then and see their high school friends so distance is definitely a consideration for that student. And some parents lives focus on their children and their children’s activities so may have different feelings about impending separation.</p>
<p>I would not have minded at all if my daughter had stayed closer to home. I wouldn’t have gotten in her business, but would have liked to have been able to see her more easily, or been closer when she is ill…</p>
<p>But, honestly, this one has been an adventurer since the day she was born, and if she wasn’t out in the world on an adventure? I’d actually be rather concerned she was not well. The challenge was to get her to stay in the states, frankly, which we were able to do for undergrad, at least.</p>
<p>No convincing was needed. It’s a big country and planes fly everywhere. We deliberately took our kids to other parts of the country to look at colleges. We wound up not looking at certain parts of the country (such as the West Coast) but that was because they didn’t find anything there that was interesting or compelling to them, not because we as parents would have objected.</p>
<p>Naturally, then, our son chose the one place that is 45 minutes away from where we lived. Indeed, that’s the only downside – that he won’t be exploring a new city / part of the country. It’s fine, because it’s a great school, but that’s the one thing I would say I wish were different.</p>
<p>My son found a school that had something very different and that he loved.</p>
<p>my S1 reminded me of a promise i made many years before he ever applied… “if i get in to x school can i go?” “sure!”…oops… he auditioned, he got in … who knew what i promised in grade 5 would come back to bite me!</p>
<p>D has lived in the same town her whole life. She likes the area, and in hs said she’d like to eventually settle back here, but looked at college as a unique opportunity to try living someplace new and different. We live in a New England suburb, so she either wanted to be in the city (ie Boston) or head south. She ended up falling in love with a mid-sized college in NC that is a really good fit for her, is 1/2 hour from my cousin and a 4 hour drive from her grandfather, and costs about $12k less than a comparable school in the Northeast. It’s also less than an hour from an airport large enough that she can get a direct flight from home. It’s also a “safe” area, low-crime, not in a hurricane or earthquake or tornado or terrorist-target-type zone. It’s 700 miles from us, though. But she loves it there, and really loves the weather! </p>
<p>My big fear is that she will love the area and lower cost of living and not return home to live near us.</p>
<p>But my H and I each went to college less than two hours from where our parents lived, and ended up moving 200 miles away for his job anyway, so future “permanent” living site is hard to predict.</p>
<p>I agree that the biggest thing isn’t necessarily how many miles away a college is, but how near it is to an airport - especially an airport large enough that you can fly there non-stop.</p>
<p>Earning a full ride made for a fairly convincing argument. :)</p>
<p>I don’t need to be convinced - I’m fine with anything in the continental US. D1, on the other hand, wants to stay in the midwest, preferably within a few hours of home. I think she’s greatly overestimating the number of times she’ll come home during the school year.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>I would mind more about my mom making me stay here if we didn’t live around such good schools. The northeast has a lot of good schools (there are more all across the US though.)</p>
<p>I guess I’ve grown to love the idea to be within close proximity to home. I asked my mom if Stanford gave me a full ride would she let me go. Of course the answer was no, that’s okay :)</p>
<p>She said when I graduate college I can live wherever I want, so Cali here I come!!!</p>
<p>We have tons of schools around us too but if my youngest winds up closer then 6 hours from home, he will be closer then his brother and his sister were at their colleges. This is the time to let them spread their wings - they can always fly home.</p>