<p>I would let my D. drive within 1 hour, we have driven her within 2 hours.<br>
That was our criteria. However, I would also consider intensity of traffic.
I also made sure that D. had sufficient amount of driving experience during HS. To accomplish that, I did not let her to go in a car with her friends driving, I made sure that she drives everywhere herself. She was allowed to take friends in her car but only if they get their parents’ permission to do so.</p>
<p>Grad 1972- my then 13 year old sister visited me when I was a 19 year old sophomore. I am horrified to say that I took her to an off campus party where I stupidly let her get drunk. I still can’t believe I was such an idiot over 30 years later. Let me just say that thank goodness my daughter has better judgment than I do!</p>
<p>holliesue - See what I mean!! We were all idiots at some point in college. I just got off the phone with one of my friends whose son is a freshman playing football at a D2 school - she just told me that the freshman players were invited by the older football players to a party tonight and there directive was to bring lots freshman girls…so, I am definitely going to wait until things settle down until next semester…I can hear it now…but I am eighteen…I can go off and fight a war but I can’t visit a college…blah…blah…blah…uuughh.</p>
<p>Teach your D to say “no” and mean it. Always travel in pairs. Never drink an open drink unless you watch it being poured. Don’t leave your drink to go to the bathroom. Call campus security (or equivalent) for a ride home after dark, etc. The school will reinforce all these rules during orientation, but its never too early to start talking about it. At my D’s orientation, they gave each kid a business card with emergency cab numbers (it’s a large city) - the ride will be billed to their student account. I’ve told D that if a cab charge shows up on her bill, I will pay it, no questions asked.</p>
<p>^^^Wow, I hope we are not discussing 13 years olds here. There are very few HS seniors who are 13 years old. I thought we are talking about average aged HS seniors who have been driving for awhile. Yes, you need to adjust to age/possession of driving license.</p>
<p>archie12, </p>
<p>I live in a world that is so MUCH more conservative than these folks on CC. I would not even consider it. This thread makes me glad I have boys. :-).</p>
<p>Good luck with whatever you decide.</p>
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<p>This and some of the other precautions discussed in this thread do not apply to the situation posed by the OP – that of a high school senior who is visiting a campus as a student’s guest. </p>
<p>The guest’s situation is actually far more difficult than that of an enrolled student.</p>
<p>Back when I was in high school, I travelled alone to visit my older brothers at their respective colleges. </p>
<p>My own kids did pretty much what your D is asking to do though only slightly different. Your D is asking to go visit friends for the sake of hanging out (not saying that is a problem but only that the circumstances are slightly different than was with my two daughters). My two Ds both did college visits and did overnights in dorms with friends they knew who attended. These visits were to colleges they were going to apply to. They sometimes even stayed with kids they did not know ahead of time, but often had friends at these schools to stay with. They did this in junior and senior years (actually for my younger D, she did it in tenth and eleventh as she applied to college in junior year of HS and so she was either 15 or 16 when doing these overnights in dorms). The only difference than with your D besides the fact that the purpose of the visits was to get a feel for the college they were going to apply to, was that due to the distance (much further than your D has to go), I took them by car or plane and so I was staying in the area at a hotel (not that this mattered AT ALL but just saying the circumstances). Therefore, the upshot is pretty much what your D wants to do…overnights with students on campus…which my kids did and I did at that age too. So, I would not have a big problem with this. It has nothing to do with “being 18.” Neither of my kids were 18 when they did it. I say this as a parent who was quite protective of my kids prior to their entering college.</p>
<p>As I just wrote, I was OK with all this. I do recall when D2 visited Emerson with me and then parted ways to spend the night with an older friend who attended and I stayed in a hotel, and this was just a couple weeks after D turned 16 and was in the midst of college apps. That night (Oct. 2004), of all nights, the Boston Red Sox won the pennant and Boston went wild, right around the area where Emerson is (Boston Common, etc) and my hotel was just a few blocks away and late into the evening, I could hear the noise of thousands in the streets and did have a little pang about my 16 year old D, a hick from rural VT, in that crowd. But she did have a cell phone and was with the college friend. It was just coincidental that the night of her visit, all that went on. Was quite a scene. Come to think of it, her visit to NYU was at age 15 staying with older friend on campus (I was in hotel) and that was a big deal as it was NYC and she had no city experience. But it is not like she was by herself in any of these situations.</p>
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<p>I think it mattered a great deal. Your presence at the hotel, plus the student’s access to a cell phone, provided the “exit strategy” we’ve been talking about. You wouldn’t have been able to protect your offspring from any lapses in their own judgment, of course, but you could have provided them with a way out of their situation if needed.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure that a parent always needs to hover nearby in order to provide an exit strategy. Yes, we’ve all told our kids to call us if they ever need a ride home, etc. But we aren’t always going to be there. I think overnight visits to college campuses, flying unaccompanied and short road trips with friends (my daughter and her friend were asked to housesit for grandma while she was in Europe), can all be valuable learning experiences for older teens. Once I dropped D off at college, I needed to be convinced that she could handle most situations on her own.</p>
<p>But I wasn’t in the same city IN CASE of a problem and was only there due to logistics of long distance travel. But here’s an example…in Feb. of D2’s junior year, age 16, when she was already an applicant to college, I took her to her audition at NYU in NYC. She wanted to stay an extra night with friends (the friends were also applicants but one friend’s older sister was a student at the university and had an off campus apartment that they were going to stay in). I had to get back home. I left her in the city and traveled the six hours home and she was to travel back home the next day. So, I wasn’t there that night. She was instructed to call me when they got in for the night for my peace of mind (she didn’t do this once IN college of course). I recall her call around midnight because they were at the bookstore in a long line to buy the new Harry Potter book that was coming out 
and she didn’t want me to worry. She called when they eventually got in for the night. So, that’s one time I can think of where I was not in the same city. I would have not had any problem with them spending the night to visit campuses with my not being in the same city but that was not that feasible given where we live and where the colleges are located and so on, and so I did transport them there but we stayed separately many nights so they could experience the campus on their own with current students.</p>
<p>You have to know your own kid, but I would encourage my d to stay with friends at college. They can’t stay in your bubble forever, and this is a good baby step to independence.</p>
<p>I’m obviously missing something here, because to me visiting a friend at college doesn’t seem like a baby step. It seems to be a situation that is more fraught with potential difficulty than actually going to college.</p>
<p>The student who is actually going to college has access to RAs and campus security. She also has a place where she lives on campus, and she probably has at least a debit card, if not a credit card.</p>
<p>The high school student visiting a friend at college has no RA or campus security to call upon and nowhere to go on campus except the place she is visiting. Chances are she has no plastic, and few hotels would be willing to rent a room to someone who is underage and has no credit card. Even if she carried a large wad of cash so that she could take a taxi out of a bad situation if necessary, there would be nowhere for the taxi to take her.</p>
<p>There are plenty of “exit strategies” for the college student. As far as I can tell, the high school student visiting a friend at college has no way out of a bad situation unless a parent or adult friend/relative is nearby or unless she has brought her own car and is within easy driving distance of home.</p>
<p>Please tell me how my reasoning is wrong.</p>
<p>How is it different from spending the night at a friend’s house? Sounds okay with me; in fact, sounds better than okay. What better way to get a sense of the social life of a college.</p>
<p>It’s different from spending the night at a friend’s house in the young person’s own community because the young person can’t simply call a taxi and go home if she wishes to. The OP was talking about a situation where the student would be visiting a college a couple of hours away from home. That’s beyond taxi range in most instances.</p>
<p>I’d like to think one’s child is visiting someone you know quite well. In my view, if that friend is trustworthy, that friend is also looking out for your child’s welfare and it is not like your child as a visitor has nowhere to go if there is a problem. As far as money, equip your child with a debit card or credit card and cash. I can’t see how your child will be all alone. Is the friend going to not be there for your child? And if there is a true emergency, campus security would respond to something on campus if you are a student or not. It is not like your child is all alone. They are visiting a friend. They should be WITH the friend at all times. Your child should have a cell phone. And if there is a true emergency, there are emergency services. Your child can call you and wait until you come or so on. But is the person they are visiting going to just disappear and not care? If you think that is even a possibility, then that is not a good person to visit. You have to gauge your own child’s level of responsibility and maturity and that of the friend he/she is visiting. Tons of high school juniors and seniors do overnight campus visits. It is pretty common. In fact, I recommend it to all of my students as part of a comprehensive campus visit.</p>
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Wait … what?</p>
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It depends on how independent the hs student is. If I were sending either of my K on such a venture, I would make sure they were confident in knowing how to get themselves out of a situation they didn’t feel comfortable with. </p>
<p>BTW, taking the attitude that “we lived through it and survived” is sometimes not a good approach. Many times we were just plain lucky, and for some of our friends, relatives, and peers, their luck ran out in a field or a culvert, or in a friend’s back bedroom.</p>
<p>First semester senior year, I visited my sister in college. Came home, packed my bags, and went back to start spring semester. Hadn’t even graduated! I had a blast! Don’t let her go! (jk).</p>