<p>I'm a junior in high school, and my parents have basically told me that I can go wherever, but they would prefer somewhere closer rather than far. Assuming money isn't an issue, as parents of college students, what is your take on this? Pro's and Con's, personal experiences, etc. I'd greatly appreciate it.</p>
<p>I can give you some of the cons of far away.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>D1 goes to a college in a small town that is about 30 minutes from an airport that is STILL in faily small city. Plane tickets are always at least $400.</p></li>
<li><p>Since she is about 1,000 miles away, almost every trip requires either plane tickets (and the hassles of flying these days) OR for one of her parents to take a few days off from work to drive to/from school.</p></li>
<li><p>Storage of her stuff in the summer has been kind of a hassle, since we don’t want to drive back and forth every time she starts/ends school. She has figured it out, but it has been inconvenient at times. Just this fall she had stored stuff at a friend’s house and planned to go pick it up the 2nd weekend of school. She ended up starting an internship near campus that requires her to wear business attire several days a week during that first week, and her stuff was not available.</p></li>
<li><p>We have never been to Parents Weekend at her college. Although I have visited a couple other times when we were in the area for other reason (spring break trip, other family nearby). But she just called tonight and talked about what a nice time she had with her roommate’s parents at dinner tonight. It makes me sad not to be there to enjoy that time with her.</p></li>
<li><p>We only see her on major holidays (and sometimes she does not come home for Thanksgiving, given the cost of the tickets – or spring break, although that is not unusual for a lot of kids). So some years we only see her at winter break during the school year. 
We are quite close, and she calls me almost every day, but I miss her.</p></li>
<li><p>If she got sick (hasn’t yet) or needed support from us, it would be harder to provide.</p></li>
<li><p>She has a wonderful boyfriend she met during her first year. He is from the part of the country where their school is, and I think they will probably stay together and stay in that part of the country after graduation. Again, far away. She might have ended up there anyway given her major/career choice, but I can see how she might never move back to our home state if she marries this (very fine) young man.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>We are looking at colleges for D2 now. We are still looking far afield, but I do find myself hoping she will like something within a day’s drive. We will be a lot more aware of these issues if she does select a college that is far away.</p>
<p>Major consideration: If you really needed to, how long would it take you to get home? </p>
<p>Assuming money is not an issue, what is your comfort level with how long and how difficult it is to get back and forth?</p>
<p>Will you have a car at school?</p>
<p>If your parents live near a major airport, and the college is near a major airport, and there are direct flights from one to the other, and there is easy transportation from the campus to the airport, it may be easier to get home from a campus 2000 miles away from home than it is from a campus 250 miles from home.</p>
<p>I’m staying rather “close to home,” eight hours away. L have a car on campus and will be able to drive home for long weekends if I get homesick or whatever. And my parents can visit me, too. But it’s still far enough away that I feel like I’m really leaving home.</p>
<p>Added to the above, as an undergraduate I went to an instate college. It was a 5 hour drive from home because there wasn’t an interstate or 4 lane divided highway most of the way. The drive was through every tiny village and town from one end of the state to the other. Sometimes “out of state” is closer and easier to get to than “instate”.</p>
<p>Travel distance and geographical distance are two different things. When my son was attending college in-state, and my daughter was on the opposite coast, she could fly home in less time than it took him to drive. Her coast-to-coast airfare was also significantly less than it would have cost to fly to the little regional airport near his college town. </p>
<p>Now my son actually came home more often during that time frame – he’d find a rider to share expenses and drive down and back with another student, and the shared cost was significantly less than airfare. And of course he could carry more stuff in his car than on a plane. But things might have been different if he didn’t have a car – so that’s another variable to factor in. If you already have a car, no problem – if you don’t, and would need a car to get back & forth from college, then you can buy a lot of plane tickets for the cost of a single car. </p>
<p>I would suggest that you first figure out where you would like to attend college, without considering geography – and then when it comes time to narrow down your list you will have a lot better sense of the specific issues involved.</p>
<p>I told both my d’s at 16 that they could go anywhere they wanted (for college or anything else) as long as it was within three days plane ride of Seattle. They took me up on it. The older one went to Cambodia, Thailand, and India, the younger one went to Egypt. Both ended up at colleges on the opposite coast. (Now both graduated, and in graduate school, and one with a long-term job, they are likely to be there for a long time.)</p>
<p>Travel time, convenience, and money is more of a consideration than geographic distance, as others have said above.</p>
<p>Probably the majority of college students go to a relatively nearby state university or community college; the demographic posting on these forums is unlikely to be representative.</p>
<p>The concept of being “too far away” is different for different types of kids and families.</p>
<p>Some kids have some anxiety/depression issues and being too far away can cause a flare-up and failure.</p>
<p>Some kids could go to school on the moon and be fine.</p>
<p>Some families’ budgets are so tight that after paying for school costs, there isn’t much left over to cover all those costs associated with going far away…summer storage, student travel, parent travel (for move-in, move-out, parents weekend, special award days, graduation, etc) and so forth.</p>
<p>One of our son’s is in grad school that is much farther away than undergrad. There have already been some unexpected costs associated with being far away.</p>
<p>Son went to college about 3 hours drive away. He would come home about once a month the first year or two and then about every other month after that. We only visited him a couple of times as we also had a daughter at home.</p>
<p>Daughter now goes to school on the opposite coast. Her school has a fall break as well as spring break. She is a sophomore this year. We do have family that lives about a hours drive from her college, and that helps. She visits them occasionally and they will pick her up from the airport, etc. She didn’t come home for Thanksgiving last year and probably won’t this year. Just too short a break when you loose a day traveling (and the jet lag issue). She loves the school, so that makes it a good thing for her. Airplane time is not fun time. So it does have it’s downsides, airline time, cost of plane tickets, etc.; but not a whole lot different as far as visit time than for my son who was much closer. As long as the school is a good fit, the distance is workable.</p>
<p>It’s different for every student and every family. If you’re the kind of child who is naturally independent (you never had issues going to slumber parties, you can do your own laundry, etc.) you might not find it hard to be on the other side of the country. If you’re used to a lot of hand-holding from your parents, you might prefer to be closer. </p>
<p>Parents will always prefer to be closer, rather than farther, from their kids. It would be weird if they didn’t. But when picking a college, if money is no object, your have the right to be a little selfish. </p>
<p>For me, being a pretty independent child, I found it not so terribly difficult to go to college on the opposite side of the country from where my parents lived, about a four hour direct/7 hour non-direct plane ride from home. My roommate, who was an only child and much more coddled by her parents, found it hard to live a two hour drive from her home, and went home frequently to deal with her separation issues. So, you can see how each person reacts differently. For some, being even an hour away is too much. For others, being a several hour plane ride is no big deal. My advice: figure out what college most attracts you, then figure out how to deal with the separation. Don’t put the cart before the horse.</p>
<p>Then you have the very independent student who can handle being far away (like my D, who is a 16 hour drive away) and have extended family (grandparents and aunts) who constantly ask why are you going so far away? </p>
<p>I personally don’t think there is any one answer for what is to far away, each person needs to answer that for themselves and go to the right school for them. Just be prepared to answer the why there question, no matter where you choose to go.</p>
<p>Both of my s’s were/are an easy plane ride, but moderately long car ride away. And with the price of gas these days, it was sometimes cheaper to fly. I agree with others, find the schools you like. Dont worry so much about the distance. If you are going to look across the country, recognize that you will likely be going home less often. If you are OK with that, then the sky is the limit.</p>
<p>My son is currently an easy plane ride away, or a long car ride away (similar to jym’s sons).</p>
<p>The one thing that I would consider with the student:
How you would feel if you became suddenly ill and were very far from home (ie: appendicitis requiring immedite surgery, mono and being in bed for an extended period much of the time, getting treatment for sudden pneumonia, etc.)? Also, how would you feel if a parent, sib, grandparent became ill and you could not visit on a weekend? I would also have parents think through their feelings on this subject.</p>
<p>Just want to add that attending a school that is a 5-6 hour ride from home is far enough away that it would not make any practical difference than if one were a 10 ride from home for a many families. For other families, that extra 4 hour ride each way would make a big difference.</p>
<p>I thought my daughter would go to college on the opposite coast, but she ended up going to the closest university to home, a 45-minute drive away. We have saved considerable dollars on transportation costs. She can come home anytime she wants, but she has gotten really involved in school and activities, and comes home once or twice a quarter. When she got her on-campus job, she could keep it over the summers. But the most important advantage is that she can come home in case of sudden family illnesses or spontaneous celebrations, like weddings (my family is not good at planning). I got unexpectedly very sick last spring, and she was able to come home to see me. My aging parents, her grandparents, are quickly declining, and she can see them. These things happen.
Now she is in Spain on study abroad, having the experience of being far away, and enjoying every minute with no homesickness. I see no compelling reason to go thousands of miles away to college unless there is a specific reason for it.</p>
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<p>I also see this as the biggest advantage of being fairly close to home.</p>
<p>If a parent knew they were ill before a kid went off to school, its reasonable to consider staying nearby. But to stay close to home because someone “might” get sick, thats hard to justify, IMO. Another poster’s dau was in college on teh other coast and became ill, requiring surgery. they handled it. I dont think they ever regretted her being in school so far away. I went to school an hour and a half from home. Rarely if ever went home other than for holidays.</p>
<p>Re the storage issue: many colleges with a large proportion of out-of-state students have summer storage facilities on campus. If you are a a college where everyone is from somewhere else, there will be more support for students from far away. Some colleges provide special events or weekend trips during Thanksgiving break, etc. if there are a lot of students who can’t go home due to distance and/or cost.</p>
<p>I think it would be harder to go far away to a school where most other students are fairly local to their homes.</p>
<p>My kids are 7 and 10 hrs away by car, but less than two hours away on a cheap non-stop flight (yeah Southwest). This has worked well for us.</p>
<p>Whether you can store your stuff at/near your college for the summer is a consideration. S1’s college allows for summer storage, so we haven’t had to drive out twice a year to haul his gera. S2’s school does not have summer storage, so we have done the stuffed-to-the-gills drive a number of times. OTOH, he is also a Bolt Bus or Amtrak free ticket away, so it all works out.</p>
<p>why do you want to be far away? that is the question.
my S could not really give me a good academic reason for wanting to be 1,000+ miles away from home. it always had to do with a significant social change. i encouraged him to shop closer to home and he found a great college in the city that is a 5 hour drive from home (1/3 students from the south, 1/3 from the NE and 1/3 from the west). However, the average student at this college is 800 miles away.
he loves it and we are much happier too. as some have already mentioned, you may end up there forever if you meet and eventually marry someone in the area where you go to college.</p>