<p>In selecting a college or university with your child, did anyone have a limit as far as time or distance from home? Obviously we would like our D to be closer to home but the schools that seem to fit her personality the best are all a plane ride away. We are also finding that she can get into some great colleges out of our region that she might not get into if she lived in that same region. </p>
<p>The way I look at it is the closest school she likes is a 5 hour drive from our home. However some of the schools in the midwest and south that she also likes is less than a 2-3 hour flight which comes out to almost the same total time for travel. I would love any feedback from parents or students that have had to judge how far is to far in selecting a college. Thanks</p>
<p>well, one important thing to consider is cost: can you afford to fly her home at least a couple of times a year? keep in mind, students travel during prime holiday/vacation periods when it’s much harder to get decently priced tickets. my d goes to school that’s a 3-4 hour plane flight. the costs of bringing her home are fairly significant.</p>
<p>We did not have financial restrictions, only emotional ones. Unfortunately, my emotions did not factor in to the equation when my son picked out his #1 school.</p>
<p>He was accepted ED. After knowing this for almost a year, I’m finally coming to grips with it, as he’s about to take off for his freshman year. It’s two plane rides away.</p>
<p>His twin sister will be at a school which is a 2-hour drive away. I calculated when they’ll be home: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and summer. Same for both, regardless of distance. Makes no diff, except in your head…my head. ;)</p>
<p>You could also factor in the number of times that you might want to go visit them: parent’s weekend, to a see a performance/game that they are in, etc. That costs money, too.</p>
<p>We didn’t set any distance limits when first discussing where our daughter could investigate schools. </p>
<p>We did, however, make it crystal clear to her that if she required plane travel to get to/from her school we would pay ONLY for the trip there in the fall, home for Christmas and home in the spring. Any other trips home would have to be on her dime.</p>
<p>We allowed both of our sons to choose the college that was right for him – without placing any restrictions on location. It just happened that they both choose to go to schools in New England – 2500 miles away from our home in AZ! Living in another part of the country and experiencing a different “culture” and different weather was a large part of the attraction for them.</p>
<p>Based on our experience and the experience of other family members who chose to stay closer to home for college, it’s not the travel TIME that is important. The very big difference is between being able to drive to/from school and having to fly. How many hours you are actually in the air – whether it is 2 or 7 – is far less important. However, the number of flight segments you have to take (i.e., if the flight is non-stop or includes a change of planes) does come into play in northern climates, where there is a higher probability that you could get delayed or stranded due to ice/snow storms. </p>
<p>If you can drive to/from school, it is much easier to get all their stuff to the dorm and to bring it home for the summer. Packing/shipping and making arrangements to put stuff into storage over the summer is a much bigger hassle – not to mention more costly. </p>
<p>You also have to take into account the cost of airline tickets both for your daughter and also for you and your husband if you want to attend Parents/ Weekend, see her perform in a play or a sporting event, etc. It might affect how many times she can come home and/or how many times you can go see her. </p>
<p>We only see our sons for Christmas, Spring Break, and the summer. That was a little hard at first, but we do keep in touch with frequent phone calls and emails. It’s actually been good for our sons as they have become very independent, since they can’t lean on Mom and Dad to help them out as much. Usually they are invited to spend Thanksgiving and other long holiday weekends with friends who live closer to their schools, so their social skills have improved too, lol!</p>
<p>We are imposing no geographical limits. It’s up to our children to decide if proximity to (or distance from) home is important to them. Distance will obviously affect how often they can come home, how easy it is to transport their stuff, etc. I went to college 2 hours from home and to law school 5 hours from home, and I came home from both for Thanksgiving, winter break, spring break and summer. Had I been a lot further, I probably would have skipped the T’giving trip - not enough upon which to base a decision, IMO.</p>
<p>My S had pretty much picked colleges that were all within a three hour drive from us before we thought about it, but we did let him know we PREFERRED something within about a six hour drive.</p>
<p>Some plane rides are cheaper and more convenient than others. We have found that Southwest Airline’s entry into our market with numerous direct/nonstop flights daily to the airport that serves our kids’ college made them feel much, much closer.</p>
<p>It also depends how much you NEED to load the car up with gear and drive back and forth several times during your child’s college career. I don’t think anyone actually needs to do that ever, but lots of our friends seem to experience it as, at least, an emotional necessity. So they drive back and forth a lot. We don’t.</p>
<p>Another consideration might be medical care. If a student needs regular visits to a doctor, especially one who has been following the student for a while, it might be a good idea to be closer to home.</p>
<p>Otherwise, ease and cost of travel would be a factor. Even for major cities, some airlines do not have direct flights. So the travel time can be as long as a bus or train ride, unless one wants to pay an arm and a leg for a direct flight. Another consideration for our Ss was whether they would need a car.</p>
<p>In terms of transporting their stuff, it also matters what kind of stuff they have. If, for example, it includes a number of musical instruments, transporting them by air can be dicey.</p>
<p>Don’t forget to add the cost of shuttle/bus/taxi from airport. And the time/distance driving back and forth to your local airport.<br>
D and S both chose fly away schools. Home for Xmas and summer (if they want)
only. We don’t visit. We talk on the phone/email-- it seems close enough. </p>
<p>S’s school is so far from airport–the shuttle costs almost as much as his flight. And sometimes it takes him longer–depending on traffic/#of passengers on shuttle-- to get from airport to school than to fly halfway across the country!</p>
<p>D’s school is only about 5 miles from 2 airports–shuttle is less than 1/3 cost of S’s, and she can easily get a ride from another student. And while cheap tickets are available through Southwest, you can’t find a cheap ticket for Xmas break if the college gets out after Dec. 16. (I actually asked S’s school to consider this when they make their calendar–but they don’t–they always get out 1 or two days after the tickets go up). Moving stuff isn’t an issue for them–they travel light.
I hope my younger kids will see the benefits of schools within driving distance. I won’t restrict them, but I never wanted to be a “jetsetter” and I’m tired of the expense.</p>
<p>We didn’t impose distance restrictions but insisted on public transportation. Stuff happens- grandparents get sick (and die); other family crises, etc. and we didn’t want to be in a position where the only way to get home was by car. (ours, theirs, or someone else’s). So as long as the kids could get home via Amtrak (we live on East coast), Greyhound, or one of the other intercity bus systems, or plane we were fine with it-- but even a four hour drive to some rural area that doesn’t have public transportation can be a major pain the neck during a crisis.</p>
<p>If you’re in a part of the country where you travel by car everywhere it’s not such a big issue, but we are so dependent on public transportation for every day life, it was a concern to us.</p>
<p>My D1 was considering a school in CA, and we live in NJ. At the time, I didn’t think it was an issue, because after all we often went to CA for a weekend. She ended up going to a school 3.5 hour drive away. In the last 2 years she’s had 2 major emergency medical problems. We ended up having to drive up to bring her home. Yes, people do get sick and people do get well. What made it difficult for her was she lived in a college dorm type of environment, where during the day most people were in class, and she couldn’t get out of the bed to get food (cafeteria)or drinks. She cried when we picked her up because she was so relieved. If she hadn’t gotten so sick, maybe it wouldn’t even matter because she only came home during regular breaks. Not everyone gets that sick, and some kids are better at taking care of themselves. D1 is in Australia (20 hours away) this semester. I am keeping my fingers crossed to hope she’ll stay healthy. But she is also 2 years older, hopefully she’ll be better at taking care of herself (I have lined up many friends there to help out if necessary).</p>
<p>I don’t think there should be limits on distance except when it comes to financial/medical issues.</p>
<p>Plane tickets/other associated travel costs can cost an arm and leg and that should definitely be calculatd into the budget.</p>
<p>Also, if your son or daughter will be requiring medical attention from a specific doctor/therapist. </p>
<p>I went to a university about 30 mins from my house and I never see my parents. Friends who went across the country come home more frequently!! In addition, I see them less during the summer than my other out-of-state friends, because I am able to keep my campus job/keep taking classes due to the distance. So over the summer I am hardly ever at home, spending most of my time at uni then, too!</p>
<p>D1 went to school about an hour or so away. It was great. Then we moved about 12 hours away. It worked out okay, but we did see her much less often and the traveling was expensive and somewhat of a pain since she was not near a major airport. Being within at least a few hours drive is definitely preferable to us. Of course, D2 is also now 13 hours away in an even more remote location. We don’t see her as often as we’d like, and can’t get to most of her performances and such, but she’s thriving and very happy, which is probably more important than our convenience. Nonetheless, I’m really really hoping D3 will not be so far away - or at least somewhere we can get a direct flight.</p>
<p>I never really considered distance as an issue, after all my parents were in Africa my freshman year. Our son is a day’s drive away (which we do to get his stuff there and home). The rest of the time he flies - we’re glad that he’s got easy access to the airport on his end and lots of flights to choose from. He doesn’t have any performances we’d go to anyway.</p>
<p>S1 flies on Southwest – a little under two hours, non-stop; 10.5 hour drive. All three area airports are equidistant for us; he can get home via public transit via two of them. We usually pick him up at the airport anyway, mainly because I can’t wait to see and talk to him.</p>
<p>Other choices were LA (cross-country, two segments to fly into Ontario, which is a 10 minute cab to campus vs. LAX), Boston (7 hours on Amtrak or 1.5 hour non-stop; 8 hour drive) and flagship (35 minute drive, 1.5 hours via public transit for $4).</p>
<p>S2’s list includes a broader mix of urban/rural. No car in the mix for either kid, so that probably is somewhat self-selecting right there, though neither has ever said that the lack of a car would drop a school from the list.</p>
<p>My kids have known since day one that their “geographic triangle” was Maine to Virginia to Chicago (we live in CT). I want to be able to get to my child quickly if I have to and vice versa. </p>
<p>That being said, if one of them decided that Stanford is the school they absolutely have to attend, no matter what, I’m not going to stop them; but I just can’t see going to an LAC outside of that triangle. If they can’t find an LAC in that triangle, they aren’t looking hard enough.</p>
<p>In my mind, as long as there was a DIRECT flight available to a school, there shouldn’t be an issue with distance from home. My DH feels differently though (both kids are girls and he wanted to be able to drive to them within a few hours if something happened and they needed him.) My hesitancy about schools that would have multiple segments in a flight stemmed from some horror stories on CC about missed connections and bad weather (you can read back in mid December of any given year) </p>
<p>One thing that has come out during our college visits this year is that x miles to one school doesn’t equal x miles to another school. As an example, both Centre College in KY and University of TN in Knoxville are about 220 miles from our home. However, a drive to Centre is a much different (and longer) drive than the one to UTK. </p>
<p>As of right now, our DD has decided that she doesn’t want to attend a school that she has to fly to. As a result, the remaining schools on her list are all within a 250 mile radius. And that has been completely her decision (but her Dad’s really happy ;)</p>