In creating a college list for D25 I keep finding colleges and thinking how do students get there??? I know there are people within driving distances of schools, but for some of them the travel arrangements seem like they would be very hard.
How much do your consider ease of travel when looking at colleges? We live in STL which doesn’t have the best flights but isn’t exactly remote. We’ve had several travel issues/delays with our son just flying back and forth to Philly (although most were probably Southwest issues).
How do you get to these if you don’t live close?
Allegheny
Dickinson
Middlebury
Mount Holyoke
Whitman
I’m guessing Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby have a way to get to campus from the Portland airport?
It actually seems easier to get to Pitzer and Pomona even though they are quite far.
I’m kind of hoping she sticks with loving Macalester and gets in there just because travel would be easiest.
Regarding Whitman, there is a bus that goes between Walla Walla and the Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco three times a day.
It would definitely be a long travel day from St Louis, because it looks like the shortest flights from St Louis to Pasco are about 6 hours with one stop and the bus ride is an additional 1.5 hours.
For Mt Holyoke most people fly to Bradley and then use an Uber or shuttle. The school will run shuttles during busy times (Thanksgiving/winter break). Students coordinate though social media and share the price of Ubers. Lots of oos students at Mt Holyoke/Smith. Logan is more of a chore and mostly avoided. At times students come up with other clever ways depending on the friends they make. For example they might fly to NY and meet with friends and then drive together and such.
IIRC Middlebury runs shuttles to the Burlington airport at breaks. Tagging Middlebury expert @MWolf to confirm. FWIW Colby is farther from the Portland airport (77 miles) than Middlebury is to Burlington (35 miles).
We live in the deep South and friends’ C23 is heading to Middlebury in the fall. They visited the campus on a New England trip, child fell in love with the school and ED’d (the school does seem perfect for this student!). Now that they are dealing with the actual logistics, it dawns on them what a pain this will be.
Just an fyi- my kids were all in cities with good public transportation options to where we live- and not that far away either (the furthest was about 180 miles) and-- they didn’t come home nearly as much as we thought (hoped?) they would.
One of them had a research position on campus starting the summer after freshman year- we got a couple of days of family vacay at the end of the summer, but we met up halfway to do that. Another ended up in DC, other cities for summer jobs-- again, happy to meet us at the beach for a long weekend (if we could find a convenient beach) but it wasn’t like “my last exam is Tuesday and I’m coming home Wednesday, can you pick me up?” They all stored their stuff at college, had friends to help with the shlepping for move-in day after freshman year, always seemed to have a place to stay after the dorms would lock them out, etc.
So get a handle on your expectations as well as the logistics. Mine came home 3/4 Thanksgivings, after finals (at some point in December) and then unless we made the effort to visit them-- that was it. YMMV. But it was not the endless visits home I had thought.
All of the colleges seemed very attuned to the need to get kids to bus stations, train stations, airports-- shuttles, campus vans, etc. And the ride boards are much more sophisticated than what we remember from the “tear off a piece of paper from a bulletin board” days. Kids driving home or driving to a major metropolitan area or to an airport are using social media and actively seeking someone to share the gas money!
I pushed colleges that were a direct flight away. And I saved enough miles that I could always bring them home unexpectedly in case of heartbreak, failed exam, etc. Only 1 used that, but it was nice to have.
We definitely included ease of travel in our college search. We live outside Chicago, near O’hare and Midway is also under an hour away even with traffic. We prioritzed direct flights. My d21 looked at Grinnell, and we realized that it would be challenging for her to get home, especially b/c she would not have a car there. She is at Vanderbilt - less than $20 Uber to the airport and many direct flights home. This has been very important to us, as she has been able to get home easily when family issues have arisen. My current senior ended up choosing Pomona. They flew there alone for admitted students day (We met them there), so that they could experience the travel, and found it easy to navigate, and again, although the flight is longer, there are several options of airports and many direct flights, making travel possible. We needed to have a school that allowed our students to navigate the transportation independently with ease and timliness. Although our kids are not close - we managed this with airports and urban locations.
I’m having a time getting my DS24 to consider colleges beyond day driving distance after watching older teammates get stuck in airports in March 2020 when their colleges abruptly closed and hearing about it from them. I keep trying to convince him that that is unlikely to happen again, but it’s certainly a consideration, if for no other reason than convenience. He’s also interested in the job market near us, so that’s a big consideration as well. He doesn’t want to go to school in the city, however. A lot to balance!
OP, my DS is interested in adding Macalester to his list but the distance is what is making him hesitate right now. Following!
D25 was at a summer program at Colby last summer. His flight home from Portland was cancelled and he was rebooked on a flight out of Boston the next day. It was not fun trying to negotiate that. He ended up taking a bus to Boston and flying standby that night. It was hard to even arrange a hotel for him since many places wouldn’t let an 18 yo stay alone. It ended up working out but it was not fun during.
Navigating air travel is a good life skill. My younger kid went to college across the country. When she started, there was a direct flight that was about $250 round trip. By the time she graduated, flights were not direct, and were in the $400 range. It was a long travel day everytime, but she did not care. She lived her college.
Older kid went to college about 2 1/2 hour drive away. The first year, we drive back and forth to get him on breaks. It was easily a five to six hour round trip when you factor in we usually stopped to eat.
There were times when the cross country trip took less total hours than the driving trip.
If your kid loves their college, the travel will work out.
It’s definitely something to at least think about. Our daughter went to college at Susquehanna, in central PA. There was just no great way to get her the 500 miles home, other than driving. The bus took forever, and it was a hassle getting to Harrisburg to fly. So we just drove her until her sweet grandfather bought her a used car.
You can also fly direct from Saint Louis to Seattle, and then to Walla Walla. So no long bus ride needed. And I just read they are likely adding another flight into and out of Walla Walla. They cut back number of flights during Covid, but want to add another back to the schedule.
Yes, there are shuttles from Midd to Burlington when students are on their way home and back for break. The train is also now going through Middlebury.
Our kid has a couple of friends who have cars, including a good friend who comes from a town a few miles away. There are a good number of students who have cars on campus, and there are different ways to connect to students who are driving to Burlington, or even Boston or New York, and have room.
That being said, we have taken her to colleges at the beginning of every Fall, and back every spring. Well, sort of. In 2020 we dropped her off at a friend’s house in New York, where she quarantined with her friend, and they were able to go together. Had we taken her, we would have either had to sleep in the car or break quarantine. Her friend’s home was just close enough that it could be done in one shot from our home.
Overall, though, like all small rural NE LACs, Midd is not a place from which a student can catch a plane home for a weekend.
Midd alum from eons ago (pre-pre-Uber) and I remember scoping out my airplane companions for fellow Midds to share the hour cab ride to campus. Tell your kiddo to wear their college sweatshirt and make some friends. It generally worked out to find someone to share a ride.
My college freshman at a southern school an hour from the airport has found a similar strategy generally works. Almost always finds someone on the flight to share the Uber back to campus.
My sister went to Middlebury eons ago, from Central Wisconsin. Getting there involved a trip from our airport to Chicago, and that involved stopping at 2-4 other cities on the way. Once in Chicago, a flight to Boston. Then somehow getting to Middlebury, usually by a bus or a ride with a relative (we had several in Boston) or friend.
It was diffinitely a long trip. She only went there for a year and I think only came home at Christmas and spring break.
My daughter went to school in a smaller town in Florida. She could have flow from that town’s airport, but that would have involved a transfer in Atlanta (as my friend said, all roads lead through Atlanta). She could always find a ride to Orlando and a direct (4.5 hour) flight. Still, she only did it twice a year, never for Thanksgiving (a short break) or spring break (had to play her sport)
While I wanted to think the difficulty of travel wouldn’t play into the decision (after all, there are international students everywhere, even at remote colleges), it absolutely did.
DS23 fell in love with Michigan Tech and I wanted him to look at Whitman.
I knew travel to the UP was going to be difficult but I didn’t realize what a pain or how expensive it would be. When DS was invited to attend a competition for a full scholarship, I dove right into making travel arrangements. Because there were no direct flights, he’d have to fly through Chicago. (Surprisingly, if he flew into Detroit, there were no non-stops to MT). It wouldn’t be a big deal, as Chicago is an easy airport to get to, but then there was only 1 flight a day to MT (luckily the airport is very close to campus) and the timing of incoming flights from our area was going to be an issue. If there was a delay getting to Chicago the probability that we’d have to wait til the next day to catch a flight was pretty high. Flights also get canceled or diverted because of weather during the winter months this could mean not one, but 2 days of travel that weren’t really planned for. Because I was forced to take days off of work, that became a big issue and we realized that this was always going to be more than we bargained for. Because there were other schools he loved, we dropped MT. It also made me not push Whitman as it would have been similar. I basically decided that if they can’t get door to door in 12 hours that it wasn’t going to happen and that direct flights were preferred. It was my line in the sand but also an easy one to draw as he had so many great options that fell into the 12 hour range.
