<p>When it came to choosing a college, my friend told his daughter that she could go anywhere she wanted as long as it was no more than four hours, one way, from their house. Luckily there are a number of first rate collleges and universities within a four hour drive from western Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>This brings up the question, for most students, realistically how far is too far from home. (If you live in Hawaii and your kid gets into MIT, I am not talking about you). A four hour drive? Six hours? Eight hours?</p>
<p>I currently live in Philadelphia and my parents are supporting my decision to attend Pepperdine if I get accepted. This is probably the farthest one could go, 2000+ miles. So I guess it all depends on the individual, however I disagree with parents who limit where their children can go to college unless its due to financial costs (transportation and stuff..)</p>
<p>I like them close enough that I can get to them within a day's worth of driving-- so within about 1,000 miles-- in case of emergency. It hasn't always worked out that way but that's what I prefer.</p>
<p>It is different with every family. My son is 25 hours away by plane. He is right in the middle of America and loves it. He is no longer as much a stranger in a strange land. College is the experience, the growth of the student. It is one time in a life. That is how I feel as a parent.</p>
<p>With one child in college four hours away, and the second on a high school year abroad, it feels to me that the right thing is <em>less</em> that four hours away when the second one starts looking at schools. </p>
<p>That would give him anything between Baltimore to Boston, all the Ivies, and perhaps a bit beyond. I might modify my request to include any school within 6 hours on Amtrak, which now gets him into Virginia.</p>
<p>I live in Texas. We're used to driving long distances to get anywhere. I'm also a firm believer that college presents an opportunity to "sample" a different part of the country. D is currently attending college in Minnesota. It's generally a two day drive, but she usually shares a ride with other students who live along the way. Son is now looking at colleges in the midwest.</p>
<p>Our kids have gone 600 and 900 miles away, respectively. I'm with fireflyscout above - for students who are open to living in a completely different location, college is a wonderful opportunity to see what else is out there. And as others have pointed out on other threads, air travel makes the distance much shorter. Though one of our ds was in school an hour from the airport, and there was no such thing as a convenient flight to/from home.</p>
<p>It's true that kids who go to college far from home often settle far away, too. I see this as the natural order of things. I live in upstate New York, where the sun doesn't shine five months of the year and the annual snowfall is at least 120 inches, so I'm planning to get out myself, eventually! </p>
<p>I've never minded the long drive to/from school at the beginning and end of each year. It's nice to have that much time to talk on the way there - and I can have the CD player to myself on the way back. :)</p>
<p>I am open to my S going to any of the schools he applied and they are scattered across the nation. My biggest issue was that he choose schools that would be close to family support. So Northeast would be close to grandparents and aunt, uncle and their families; West Coast would be close to his other grandparents that would love to have him close by; and Southeast would mean close to us in NC or an uncle in TN. So as far as I am concerned all his his current choices meet that criteria. Mom wants him close to home.
I agree with frazzled1 about the long drives, w/CD books being my choice. I am so looking forward to driving my S to his school choice.</p>
<p>D2 just got into her first choice on the east coast, and while we wish she wouldn't be so far away, there's no way we could deny her dream. D1 is an 11 hour drive away (or two hour flight, still on the west coast), but has come home only for Thanksgivings, Christmases and summers (and likely not this coming summer) so the great distances don't seem so significant, and we're :( used to few visits.</p>
<p>We had a wonderful time driving our son to IA from VT, stopped at Niagara Falls and other great places. It has not always been convenient flying in and out this year, but in the bigger picture, he's at a wonderful school and is having a great experience. I have family in the midwest, so visiting my son means I sneak in a visit with my Mom and others too. We have travelled a lot with our son, so never expected him to stick close to home. Hubby and I have flexible schedules and frequent flier miles from his work, though, so we can visit him more often than would be true for some families.</p>
<p>It's his life, not mine. At the time we lived in Virginia. He went to school in LA because that was the best school in the country for what he wanted. People told me that he would stay there. He has. I knew he would, but it's his life not mine.</p>
<p>As you can see from the answer it is one of those it all depends things. But to the degree finances play a part, then distance may start to matter. If it is beyond a one day round trip, the costs can go up significantly on the travel side in terms of move in, move out, coming home for breaks or other situations (someone gets sick).</p>
<p>I went to college 8 hours from home, and found that to be a good distance. Close enough that if I <em>had</em> to get home I could, but far enough that I couldn't run home if something got tough at school. </p>
<p>My D is looking at schools anywhere from 2 to 10 hours drive. I'll support whatever she picks, although we have talked several times about the restrictions on her if she goes to the farthest away. It's not really near an airport, so there would definitely be some planning issues. But that's part of learning to cope with life. With buses and trains and planes, no place is really inaccessible.</p>
<p>To the horror of most of our friends, when our oldest was ready to explore colleges, we took a map, drew a 250 mile radius around our hometown (in CT) and told him he was required to pick a school OUTSIDE the circle. We specifically did not want him at a school that would allow him to come home on weekends. Of course it helped that he is just the type of kid who was not interested in coming home on weekends (or for breaks, as it turns out).</p>
<p>Anyways, he is in Arizona and loves it. We fully believe that he will not return to CT to live (or even for summers after this first one); his career interests are better satisfied out west.</p>
<p>Travel is a challenge, but fully manageable. His plane flights entail an entire day of travel due to the distance his school is from Phoenix and our distance from the airport on this end. It was not difficult at all to set him up in his dorm last fall: we just arrived a day early and did our shopping there (you know there are Targets and Wal-Marts everywhere); some items we ordered online and had shipped directly. He is currently making arrangements to store his stuff for the summer.</p>
<p>As tsdad says...it's his life...at this point we are just minor players. We've done our job well.</p>
<p>I used to think that there should be a distance limit, but now I'm not so sure.</p>
<p>My daughter is a freshman at Cornell, a seven-hour drive from home and a very inconvenient and complex trip by mass transit (except during scheduled Cornell breaks, when there is a very convenient charter bus to our area). She does not have a car at school. </p>
<p>My son, who is a senior at our state university (less than an hour's drive from home), will be going to graduate school this fall at the University of California at San Diego. We live in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. It is actually easier, and in many cases, quicker, to get from DC to San Diego than to get from DC to Ithaca.</p>
<p>If, because of some family emergency, one of us parents had to get to Ithaca or San Diego or if one of the kids needed to come home unexpectedly, it would be easier to accomplish this for the one in San Diego than for the one in Ithaca (especially if it happened to be winter).</p>
<p>So maybe distance matters less than convenience of transport.</p>
<p>Our son is about a seven hour drive away, but easy one hour flight with good public transport to the local airport on his end at least. That means we only drive in August and May and we do have to pay for a hotel room overnight. My nephew is in Houston which is way too far to drive, but it's even easier to fly to. I went to college with parents who were living in Africa at the time, so distance sort of seems natural to me. I don't expect to see my kid too often. </p>
<p>Like Marion, I think convenience of transport is more important than driving distance.</p>
<p>Marian ... it really seems that Cornell is just difficult to get to, no matter how you slice it. I was there Saturday/Sunday and going back today. Leaving 11 am, expected ETA home -- 11 pm. If we push it. </p>
<p>In the spring, it's all lacrosse, all the time. </p>
<p>And it could have been lacrosse at Denver, or lacrosse at Notre Dame. I (guess) I can be thankful that it's driveable in 4 hours! Athough when I try to include Cornell on the end of a business trip that involves train or plane -- it's next to impossible!</p>
<p>It depends on the finances, the child and the transport.</p>
<p>For us, what Marian describes is very real. We live in a city with terrible air service, and our D is at Dartmouth. It is not a bad drive for her to manchester - about an hour, a little longer on the bus - but we don't have Southwest on our end. For the other airlines, it is cheaper to go all the way to Boston (2 hours). Then, the flights to our town are so expensive that it is often much cheaper for us to drive an hour and half to the next town over to pick her up. It was so bad at T'giving that we actually went to Atlanta (300 miles) to pick her up (we do have family in that area). </p>
<p>As for driving distance, I would sleep much better if our son (high school junior) ends up somewhere without a car. Here in the South, most public colleges allow frosh to have cars, and that is the norm. We may just say no to the car especially first semester, but it will be very hard for us to go beyond the first year, especially since most kids become "commuters" after either frosh or soph years.
My rule of thumb is if you can't just get into the car on a whim - say over 3 hours - then you are far enough away to separate.</p>
<p>My youngest stepdaughter is in Tampa and, like archiemom, her mom just took her down a day ahead of time and took her shopping for stuff down there. </p>
<p>I also have a friend who has two daughters in college - one in Florida and one in California. Since we're in New Hampshire, they really couldn't get further from home, or further from each other, while staying in the United States.</p>