I was (somewhat) pushing my son to consider schools far and wide, although my spouse really didn’t want him to go too far away. He imposed his own geographic limits, looking only in northern New England (VT, NH, ME) – but that also limited his choice of schools to essentially either reaches or safeties (not really any “matches” in his range within these states, in the category he wanted). Fortunately, he got in to his first-choice reach, but then he had to spend his first semester of college in France – now that’s far away! We all survived, even my spouse.
Although our kid applied to OOS Honors Colleges for merit money, we felt rightly or wrongly why apply to other top reach schools when Stanford is in CA and it’s not cold. I guess we could have been pickier but too lazy.
When I read these types of threads it’s pretty clear to me that we as parents are rationalizing our fear of our kids leaving the nest and less on financial and medical needs requiring our kids to stay close to home. For example, the odds of your college kid needing emergency surgery in college is extremely rare (1 in 500?) and not a logical reason to have your kid only attend a college within a two hour drive.
Let’s not put limits on our kids education and growth to adulthood by our unfounded and irrational fears. Kids need to spread their wings, and we should give them that opportunity without unwarranted road blocks. They will be fine…
The fear is only irrational until it happens. My daughter is about 2000 miles away. She had the flu twice this year, and the first time I thought she was in real trouble. Couldn’t breathe, ached, couldn’t take care of herself. It was hard trying to manage it from afar.
I think part of it also depends on where you live.
My kids have a ballpark 5 hour radius, so 300ish miles from which to choose.
Three hundred miles from NYC can get you to Quebec, to Montreal, to Pittsburgh, to Virginia, and all the places in between.
New England alone has hundreds of colleges.
I realize that some parts of the country don’t offer such an amazing variety, but I don’t feel at all that we “put limits on her education” by narrowing her search to ballpark 300 miles.
And, for what it’s worth, she did get accepted to Buffalo State, but realized she wasn’t comfortable with being quite that far away.
Yes to bjkmom, geography matters. Our state flagship is a 6 hour drive. I preferred that my son apply to colleges that had direct flights to the area. The distance limited our visits, for sure.
I got a call from my son when he was in Jordan. “How high should your temperature be before you go to the emergency room?” He did end up going to the emergency room. They couldn’t figure out what he had, and he got better in a couple of days. We worried. But there was no way we were going to not let him have the experience of being immersed in a culture so different from our own.
My kid HAD that emergency surgery…3000 miles away. Thank goodness for close friend and relative nearby who were able to be there.
When our kid was applying to colleges, there were two contenders on the opposite coast. She understood that this would mean limited flights home…we paid to fly her home at Christmas and summer. We never went to a parents weekend, or anything like that. The time change and distance just didn’t make that an easy thing for us working parents to do.
But truth be known…we saw that kid more days per year during college than the kid who was only 2 hours away.
This same thing happened to me, and it did drive a small wedge between me and my parents that still exists to this day. The irony is that my “dream school” is a more prestigious school, would have opened more doors career wise, would have cost less and would have been only about 30 minutes more driving distance. (My second choice was actually closer to home even though it was in another state.) Even attending college in state, I rarely came home, usually only for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break, and summer. My parents visited me a total of four times in four years - freshman year for drop off, parents’ weekend, graduation weekend, and one weekend just because they happened to be traveling through town and stopped by.
My advice would be to tell your child that you can only afford X amount of dollars and that includes transportation to and from school for the major holidays. If School X in California meets those criteria, it might be well worth it. And, who knows, with the right amount of aid, he might have more money that can be used to come home more frequently. Also note, air travel between major hubs isn’t that bad. It’s when you have to travel in and out of a regional airport that airfare gets really pricey.
@socaldad2002 My DD had a kidney infection…I drove down the 1 hour, took her to the ER, and stayed a week with her.
My son is 1700 miles away but only a short and direct 2-1/2 hr flight.
I sent him Grammas Chicken Soup when he had the flu.
If he goes to the ER, I could get there.
My daughter is a 7hr drive because flights wouldn’t get us there much faster - tiny regional airport not reachable from our closest hub. I could still get there.
I had a small aneurysm rupture right after college when I was working in NYC. Honestly, I was an adult. My parents swooped in, made all the Dr. Appointments, agreed to the surgery, and I pretty much just let them. So after six weeks at their house recovering from a craniotomy, I went back to my apartment in NYC - and never saw a doctor for 3 years. Why? I don’t know. I had never made an appointment for myself, I had a brain injury, no one specifically said “follow up with me in 3 months” or anything like that. Point being that, there SHOULstart to be some separation, the kid SHOULD start to have to thjnk for themselves, do I go to the health center? The ER? And make appointments, and listen to the instructions, and make follow up appointments. It’s like tying their shoes or cutting their meat- you HAVE to stop doing it for them at some point, because when they NEED to do it and you aren’t around, they need to be able to.
IMO it is far better to stay within a 5 hour drive- for the parents, at least.
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My D2 is on the other coast. We only see her a couple times a year. That stinks.
On the other hand when she went to school 1/2 hour away she brought her college friends to us for the holidays, and she came back several times on weekends, with college friends in tow. That was great for us.
When she went to school 4 hours away she still came back a number of times times during the year, by car. and it was easy for us to visit her.
My D1 developed an ongoing medical problem at her school 8 hours away. We could do nothing about it. we had trouble with health insurance too, the providers there were out of network IIRC.
One could take a car service to the airport, take a plane there, then rent a car to drive to their school. That would be a lot more expensive and cumbersome than driving. up to 5 hours.And, given airport lead times, rental car rental and return times and driving distances, it wouldn’t be particularly fast either. And can’t really be done spontaneously or on short notice. Say kid all of a sudden has an unexpected free weekend, might want to come home. Can’t because flights are ridiculously expensive.
You could not rent a car, but then are much more limited in what you can do with the kid while you are there. Usually when we visited them in college the kids wanted us to take them to places they couldn’t otherwise easily (or financially) get to.
There are east coast schools that have decent to good west coast recruiting. Investigate and suggest those, with evidence. If he goes to one of those, he can still get to the west coast. Possibly. But along the way he might get seduced by east coast opportunities, which wouldn’t happen if he was in school on the west coast. An east coast job would mean you could actually see him sometimes.
I would try to persuade him to stay somewhat local, try to make it sound good from his perspective. But at the end of the day I wouldn’t force it, for reasons others have mentioned.
But then I’m the guy with a kid who ended up on the whole other coast, not a real success story from a parent perspective. So maybe I’m not one to give advice.
We’ve limited our son’s search to in state schools (Texas) and schools in bordering states (which are closer than some of his in state options).
We chose not to limit but my daughter ended up choosing the school closest to our new home (just under 3 hours). Originally we thought she would be an 11 hour drive so I was prepared to be longer distance but have to admit that I’m way more comfortable knowing she’s an easy drive away instead of a trek or plane ride.
Parents need to let go and let college be part of the transition to adulthood. But if three flights a year back and forth will make college unaffordable (it really doesn’t need to be more than three if you want your child to develop independence), then I can see the argument for limiting the geographic area. And as others have pointed out, much depends on the home and destination geographic areas. If you live near a city and the destination is in or near a city, the costs are more manageable than flying from rural Montana to St. Lawrence University or Bates.
Also you expand your possibilities for merit aid by expanding geographically, and thus you might come out better financially by sending your child outside of your local area.
I think the point here is if you want to be the cause for your child to…not graduate, not get the job they want, not to have the life they want, then by all means limit them, because like it or not if something doesn’t work out it might come back to the fact that they think it all would have been different if their parents hadn’t forced them to go to the college they attended. I am a single parent of an only child. I really really hope she chooses a college that she can drive home for the weekend, but I would never tell her she has to think of only a college within 200 miles because I would feel better. If she decides to go across the country I will do the best I can to collect frequent flyer miles, Skype, and do anything to stay in touch, but will support her decision.
Get an airline credit card that gives you miles, and start hoarding them. I always keep enough miles for a last minute roundtrip home if an emergency occurred, and that provided peace of mind.
Or…do what works for you and your own family.
@drewsmom17 , you sound like a reasonable person to me. You are feeling guilty for pushing but you aren’t saying no. And you have reasons – both cost and seeing him – for your feelings.
When your son goes off to college, and then afterwards, your relationship is going to change. You may be feeling the beginnings of that now. And I confess, we are still working through that re-calibration in our family. But you can help in keeping that relationship healthy by talking to him honestly about your feelings and concerns. If you are trying to steer him toward your preferences without being upfront about it, you risk your reputation as a “trusted advisor”. He needs to understand what your lens is, and you need to understand his. If you don’t have this discussion, he may dismiss GOOD information from you because he suspects motive. And it’s important to do this now, rather than to start pulling options off the table next April – that is unfair and may damage your relationship irreparably.
If the money is the concern, I would suggest laying out NOW what you can and can’t do, then let the chips fall where they may. It could be that he gets a great package from a school out west that even with travel is a better financial alternative. Or it may not be affordable. But I wouldn’t take options off the table at this point without all the data just because you suspect that those schools will cost more.
If seeing him is the issue for you, you need to say those words out loud to him. And you may hear back that he wants his college experience to be solely “his”. If that’s the case, you may need to reassure him that even if he IS close to home, you have no intention of visiting beyond Parents Weekend or whatever. I know kids who love that their parents still come to all their swim meets or whatever. And there are others, like mine, who would prefer that we not set foot on his campus. If there is a real reason for wanting him near, such as a health concern (including mental health – his, not yours!) – talk it over and figure out how you’ll address it at ANY of the schools he’s considering.
I’d ask him to tell you about the schools on his list. It may be about programs, it may be about the “vibe”, it may be that he fears he won’t be competitive at the schools you like. CS is a competitive major, so in limiting him geographically, you are probably not helping him.
You can be supportive on all of this, and it sounds like you have been, but with reluctance. Use this as a chance to take your relationship with him to that next level. You don’t want him to avoid talking to you or seeking your counsel because he fears you’ll act in self-interest or that the only way that you can have a loving relationship with him is if he is physically near you.
A lot of people are pretty blasé about just hopping on a plane, so I want to share my experiences. I fly A LOT and I get delayed frequently that adds a day onto my trip. Flying in or out of a city that gets snow? Or tornadoes or other bad weather? Need to take the last flight of the day? You might want to rethink that one. Need to fly into a smaller airport? Your flight will be cancelled before flights going into larger airports. If your kid does end up going to college somewhere that’s a flight away, definitely accumulate frequent flier points to use if you have to make a last minute flight rather than pay the costs of a last minute ticket.