<p>When choosing a college, should one consider how close a school is to home? For example, I am considering a very good university that's a thirty minute drive from my parents' house. How close is too close? A city away? A mile away?</p>
<p>Personally, anything in state is too close for me (I don’t like Arizona; I’m not from here). I mean, even California is too close. Any bordering state is too close, but I could live with going to California.</p>
<p>A lot depends on your relationship with your family. If you won’t feel obligated to go home all the time (or show up too often with your dirty laundry!), then half an hour away can work out fine. Some kids like being close enough so that traveling home isn’t a big deal, while others want to get as far away as possible. Only you know your own family dynamics and how they might play out once you’re a college student.</p>
<p>Anything within 1000 miles is too close.</p>
<p>It all really depends on you. If you don’t mind living close to home then choose a college for other reasons. However, if being close to home is a problem for you because you want to get away or have some freedom then I think a college that is anywhere from 1+ hrs away is pretty far.</p>
<p>I’d say at least an hour works well for a lot of people. I go to school about 2 hours from home, and it has worked out well for me.</p>
<p>Home was only an hour from Syracuse University and it worked out well for me. If I felt like going home & doing my laundry, it was no big deal. Then I could just turn around and go back. Looking back, I don’t think I did it very often, I liked being on campus. But sometimes my parents would come & we would go out to dinner, that was fun!</p>
<p>I with the guy who said anywhere in state is too close, NY here.</p>
<p>Lets see, with family issues etc…( and just to have experience of out on your own) further and further sometimes are starting to sound better.</p>
<p>There’s several layers here.</p>
<p>Some families will let you live a true college experience if you’re close to home and others will expect you for dinner a few times a week. So much depends on the family and how smothering they are or are not.</p>
<p>For a kid from CA, I highly recommend going OOS. I left CA for the E. Coast and really enjoyed the dramatic difference. Many don’t realize the enormity of the culture shift from one part of the Country to another. Your horizons broaden significantly when you leave many places for very different ones.</p>
<p>I’m from Texas, but am living in Louisiana. I really don’t like Louisiana, so I don’t see myself going to college here. I probably won’t go to college in Texas either (unless I get into UT-Austin or something).</p>
<p>I want to go to college like a few thousand miles away honestly, perhaps even in Quebec.</p>
<p>As far as the OP’s question, I would say anywhere within 1000 miles is too close. :P</p>
<p>I also think it depends on the circumstances. If you want to teach elementary school in your home town, well a local school might be preferred. On the other hand if you live in Arizona and your goal is international banking then you might want to get a jump on that career by spending four years in New York or Miami (for example). My daughters’ schools are both five hours from home. They don’t bring their laundry home … and they don’t hang around the house much when they’re home. Sigh.</p>
<p>I went to school about 3 hours drive away from home, and so does my S. It’s close enough that getting to and fro in a day is not a huge deal, but far enough so that you only go home on breaks. But if for some unusual reason you needed to go home or vice versa, again it is not a huge deal and doesn’t involve a plane trip.</p>
<p>I think it’s important to go away to school, but a lot depends on your relationship with your family, as others have pointed out.</p>
<p>It depends on you, but when I was applying, I decided I wanted to live somewhere new, and thus eliminated any school that was Metro-accessible.</p>
<p>It depends on a lot. I lived in Europe for half my life and the East Coast the other, and traveled back and forth from them several times a year. Also I’m extremely independent, I cooked my own meals for many reasons (eating at different times/being a meat eater and my mother not), came and went as I wanted, provided my own income etc. So I had no problem being far away and travelling a lot. So I went to school 3000 miles away, since it was the school that had everything I wanted, but the fact it is was so far away from home wasn’t a factor. I felt like being in Los Angeles would be a good experience, but if the school was right around the corner I’d still attend it. Generally I’d say far enough to come home without a hassle, but far enough so that it could be a incovience to do it regularly is best. That way you have enough of a barrier to feel seperated from home, but still have the comfort to go home too. But if I had applied to an MIT or Harvard and was accepted I’d have to consider going there over my ‘dream’ school given the ability to save money by living at home and go to a elite school.</p>
<p>Anything less than an hour is too close (thus elimating the University of Delaware, the local community college, a Penn State campus, Johns Hopkins, UM Baltimore Campus, and Washington College). My ideal distance is two to eight hours (by car), but some schools have caught my interest outside of that range.</p>
<p>Anything on my side of the state is too close, personally. </p>
<p>There is a good college in my area but I’m not applying there because it’s about ten minutes from my house. I really want to live on campus when I go to college, but how can I justify an additional expense of several thousand dollars when I could just live ten minutes away?</p>
<p>For reference: the college on my list closest to my home is 120 miles away; the farthest is 823 miles.</p>
<p>I want to be at least 10 hours away…
preferably i want to be 3000 miles away</p>
<p>Far away is good but distance is relative. The state flagship that’s 4 hours away by car is only 40 minutes away by plane. The private school that’s 2000 miles away is still less than 5 hours by plane. If you are going to go far away, look for a place with lots of flights and/or good connections.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t go to a school which is less than a hour away from home, unless I went to a community college. I prefer to go OOS and go more than 10 hours away though.</p>