Minneapolis to Pittsburgh two-week college tour: Too much?

College Search & Selection
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<p>We live in the Denver area. Our son is about to finish his junior year. We've visited all the schools in Colorado that he's interested in. He seems to be mostly interested in liberal arts colleges. We've been planning to visit colleges in the Midwest in June, starting in the Minneapolis area and ending in Pittsburgh because we have close friends there. Our idea was to fly to Minneapolis, rent a car, and fly back from Pittsburgh. We were aiming to do the trip in about 12 days. However, two problems have arisen:</p>

<p>(1) it seems to be difficult to rent a car in Minneapolis-St. Paul and return it in Pittsburgh without incurring a huge drop charge;
(2) someone suggested in another forum that visiting 8 colleges in several states in such a short period of time is too much, and that they'll all blur together for our son. </p>

<p>If anyone has comments on either point, I'd love to hear them!</p>

<p>Here's the proposed itinerary:</p>

<p>Fly to Minneapolis-St. Paul
NORTHFIELD, MN: Carleton, St. Olaf's
MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, MN: Macalester
WAUSAU, WI: family visit
BARRINGTON, IL: family visit
CHICAGO, IL: University of Chicago
ANN ARBOR, MI: University of Michigan
GAMBIER, OH: Kenyon College
OBERLIN, OH: Oberlin College
PITTSBURGH, PA: Carnegie-Mellon University; visit friends
Fly back from Pittsburgh</p>

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<p>That sounds doable; the only one I wonder about is U of Mich. You are going somewhat out of the way for a big, expensive OOS uni, and that drive can be a pain, especially if he is interested in liberal arts colleges. You may want to skip that, or add in a nice Ohio/Indiana liberal arts college, like Earlham, Denison, or Ohio Wesleyan. </p>

<p>I do think you will have problems trying to find a rental with the drop-off charges. Could you fly to Minnesota, rent a car for that part, then fly to Chicago, and borrow a car to do the rest? You would then have to drive back from Pittsburgh; I think its about 6-7 hours.</p>

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<p>That looks doable to me in terms of visits.</p>

<p>However, here are two alternatives:</p>

<p>1) The drop charge would be lower if you left from ORD. This would mean leaving the Ohio schools and Pittsburgh for a separate trip, possibly Michigan too depending on whether you’re willing to drive out and back.</p>

<p>2) If you dropped all of the schools skipped in option #1, you could make this a circuit ending up back at MSP. You could look at Grinnell instead of the Ohio LACs; Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Iowa instead of Michigan; and Northwestern instead of CMU. Here’s how that would work:
MSP -> Mac -> Northfield -> Grinnell -> Barrington/Chicago -> Wausau -> MSP
…with the chosen state flagship fit in en route.</p>

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<p>If you could avoid the drop charge by picking up the car at ORD, you could either fly or take a train from Minneapolis to Chicago.</p>

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<p>The number of colleges is not too many given that you are breaking it up with family visits. However, the driving seems like a lot to me. I’d break it up into two visits - one flying into Minn and one flying into Pitt. Then, you can decide if you want to include the family and Univ of Chicago on the Minn trip.</p>

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<p>It’s a very doable trip and I like the mixture of different types of schools. It doesn’t make sense to only look at one type of school on a trip such as this.</p>

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<p>

I don’t think that would work because OP also wants to visit Northfield and family in Wausau.</p>

<p>My earlier post was unclear: I meant “left from ORD” as in flew back to Denver from ORD. I was assuming they would still fly into MSP.</p>

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<p>Original poster here … the lowest price for car rental for 12 days I’ve found is about $800 if we stick with the original itinerary. Drop charge is almost $400. Thanks for all your comments.</p>

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<p>Original poster again. We’re now thinking we’ll fly DEN -> MSP, MSP -> PIT, and PIT -> DEN, leaving Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan for a future trip. Even with the extra flight, it looks like it’s cheaper, plus I have to take two less days off from work.</p>

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<p>This would be a very doable trip if you did the following:</p>

<p>1) Fly one-way DEN-MSP (about $129/ticket). Rent car at MSP, drive to Saint Paul, about 15 minutes. Visit Macalester.</p>

<p>2) Drive Saint Paul-Northfield, MN, about 50 minutes. Visit Carleton and St. Olaf. Return to MSP.</p>

<p>3) Fly one-way MSP-ORD (O’Hare) or MSP-MDW (Chicago Midway airport), about a 1 hour flight at about $89 or $99/ticket. Rent car in Chicago. Visit the University of Chicago (and Northwestern?). Visit relatives in Barrington if you like.</p>

<p>4) Drive Chicago-Ann Arbor, about 4.25 hours (longer from Barrington). Visit Michigan. </p>

<p>5) Drive Ann Arbor-Oberlin, about 2.5 hours. Visit Oberlin. </p>

<p>6) Drive Oberlin-Pittsburgh, about 2.75 hours. Visit Carnegie Mellon. Visit friends if you like.</p>

<p>7) Drive Pittsburgh-Gambier, OH, about 2.75 hours. Visit Kenyon.</p>

<p>8) Drive Gambier-Chicago, about 6.5 hours, Return rental car. Fly ORD-DEN or MDW-DEN one-way, about $164/ticket.</p>

<p>This is easily doable in 12 days, maybe less. The only long drive is the last one, from Kenyon to Chicago. Minneapolis-Saint Paul to Chicago would be a longer drive, about 7.25 hours (or more, depending on Chicago traffic); that’s why I suggest you just fly that route and eliminate all rental car drop-off charges. My proposed itinerary has you on 3 one-way flights, but they’re all routes with non-stop competition, including Southwest which drives down the price. Alternatively, you could check on an “open jaw” DEN-MSP/ORD-DEN, and pick up the MSP-Chicago leg as a one-way. I can usually get a one-way MSP-ORD or MSP-MDW for around $100 per ticket, substantially less than a one-way rental car drop-off charge, and it eliminates the longest driving leg of the trip.</p>

<p>Only you’d miss those Wausau relatives.</p>

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<p>bclintonk: Thanks for your suggested itinerary. One complication I didn’t mention is that we’re trying to fly on United. I usually take whatever is cheapest, but I have vouchers from being bumped on a flight in March.</p>

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<p>We just finished our first college trip, touring upstate New York and western Massachusetts. Make sure you include enough rest inbetween campuses. You never know if you’ll have a tour guide whom conducts his/her group like an express train!!! I was exhausted. Each night when we returned to the hotel all I did was sleep to prepare for the next day.</p>

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<p>For a better rental price, try vroomvroomvroom.com It will let you compare multiple rental agencies for your itinerary.</p>

<p>Or if you are feeling truly adventurous, you could use megabus.com between major cities.</p>

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<p>It’s great that you have vouchers on United, but did you know that Southwest Chicago to Pittsburgh flights can sometimes be VERY inexpensive? Maybe you could look into doing this for part of the trip.</p>

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<p>I’m from PGH but live out of state. I’m sure you know CMU is not really categorized as a liberl arts college. If your son is interested in a liberal arts school check out Alleghey College’s web site to see if it has any appeal to him. If so, you could perhaps stop on your way to PGH since you are driving. They have a wonderful reputation, of course so does CMU, just the “liberal arts” comment made me think of them. We were in town weeks ago and managed to tour Pitt, CMU and Duquesne in one day, made the one hour 40 minute drive to Allegheny another day. Good luck!</p>

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<p>I don’t think that’s a problem on my proposed itinerary. Both Denver (DEN) and Chicago O’Hare (ORD) are United hubs, and United has frequent and inexpensive non-stops on all 3 legs, DEN-MSP, MSP-ORD, and ORD-DEN. They’re in direct head-to-head non-stop competition with Delta and Frontier on the DEN-MSP run; with Delta and American on the MSP-ORD run (as well as with Southwest and a couple of other low-cost carriers who fly MSP-MDW); and with American and Frontier on the ORD-DEN run (as well as with Southwest out of Midway). That keeps the prices low on all these routes. If you’ve got vouchers, so much the better, though some of these flights (especially MSP-ORD, but possibly even DEN-MSP) are so cheap that you might be better off saving your vouchers for more expensive flights at a later date. </p>

<p>As for the number of colleges: I’ve done similar whirlwind trips with both of my Ds, and they handled it just fine. One key is to have them take along a computer or an old-fashioned journal, and write down their impressions and “likes and dislikes” concerning each college within a couple of hours or so after leaving. Without that they might blur together, but if there’s a separate written file on each college, along with perhaps just a couple of photos, it will serve to keep the details straight. And in some ways I think it’s easier to do comparison shopping among colleges if you see several on the same trip. You notice more of the small, subtle differences that might go unobserved if you see them one or two at a time with long intervals between college visits.</p>

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<p>Wrong. It’s not really “out of the way.” According to google maps, Chicago-Oberlin is a 5 hour 40 minute drive. Chicago-Ann Arbor is 4 hours 19 minutes, and Ann Arbor-Oberlin is 2 hours 25 minutes, for a total of 6 hours 44 minutes—or exactly 1 hour 4 minutes more driving. That doesn’t seem so onerous to me. Yes, parts of I-94 between can be “a pain,” but so can the Indiana and Ohio turnpikes, so cutting out Michigan doesn’t really gain you much in that regard.</p>

<p>Clearly wrldtravlr has a bias against big public universities, but as big public universities go Michigan is easily among the very best, with much to recommend it. If your son is interested, let him see it and decide for himself what he thinks. Seems to me the OP said S is interested “mainly” in liberal arts colleges. “Mainly” doesn’t mean “exclusively.” There are in fact 3 major research universities on this list of 8 schools.</p>

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<p>Thanks, icebat!</p>

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<p>As another person from Western PA, I’ll echo that you could visit both Carnegie Mellon and Pitt in one swoop since they’re right next to each other. Duquesne is only about 5-10 minutes away, so you might check it out and see if it’s worth a visit while you’re in town. </p>

<p>In addition to Allegheny, there are more than a dozen other colleges and Universities within a two hour drive of Pittsburgh. One poster already mentioned Allegheny, but you might want to take a look at Grove City and Washington & Jefferson. I saw a great map at Barnes & Noble that had all colleges and universities marked on it. I wished it was available when we did our road trips. </p>

<p>I definitely don’t think the schools will run together. We were surprised at how different each school was. Try to get your kid to take notes of pros & cons right away to remember immediate reactions. Some schools will jump out as definite “no’s,” and some will be worth more research.</p>

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<p>I love bclintonk’s build. Well done.</p>