<p>What do you do if you live far away from your college and instead of driving you're flying in? This is what I'm doing - and I don't know what to do about bringing stuff.</p>
<p>Like..I can pretty much only pack a few days worth of clothes and toiletries since I'm going on a plane. What do I do about all the stuff I need to bring? How do other people do this who are going long distances and have to fly? Just buy everything once you get there?</p>
<p>Buy as much stuff on the other end -- or order it online and have it sent to you at your school address -- as you possibly can.</p>
<p>On the plane, take what you absolutely cannot live without for a couple of days in a carry-on. You can buy toiletries when you get there, but if you're on medications they go in the carry-on. Depending on the baggage allowance and how much you're willing to risk given the airlines' imperfect record of actually getting bags to passengers' destinations, you can take things like bedding (which you will need from the start but which can be replaced if absolutely necessary) and more clothes in your checked bag(s).</p>
<p>Ship the rest. I like Parcel Post (and it's actually delivered pretty quickly over the last year and a half that I've been using it regularly); you may prefer UPS Ground or something because it has better tracking options. You may want to ship books Media Mail -- it's slow, but it's cheap. If you're shipping a computer or something else expensive like that, you may want to go to The UPS Store and have them pack and ship for you; you get more protection if it gets damaged that way. And like tnguyen8 says, look into moving companies.</p>
<p>You don't need as much as you think you are going to need, so be very conservative. (Remember that you're going to acquire more stuff over the course of the year and if you're not taking summer classes you're going to have to get it all back home a year from now. If you're going to be living in a dorm, keep in mind also that you're going to be crowded.) Start by planning to do your laundry once a week, knowing that as you get college t-shirts and winter clothes and so on you'll end up with more stuff. If you're <em>too</em> conservative, your parents can ship things later.</p>
<p>But if you have a parent who can take a few days off work and can put some miles on the car, it might be worth driving. According to MapQuest, my mother drove me about 1,900 miles when I started school. If you're willing to drive 14 hours a day, it doesn't take as long as a lot of people think.</p>
<p>hey nontraditional how was that drive? my parents are going to drive me from kentucky to maine and i have no idea how this is going to go. the trip is about the same amount of miles as yours (maybe a bit less) and they do not plan to stop the entire way. your insight would be appreciated ;-)</p>
<p>I've gone about 1000 miles in a u-haul before and just let me tell you it was absolutely horrendous. Of course this was in the middle of june when it was 95 degrees and the AC didn't work in the truck, but I hated it. It took about 16 hours because we had to drive through the appalachian mountains basically the whole way (Alabama - Pennsylvania). I would not recommend it. If you're in a car, with decent AC and you can be relatively comfortable (not crammed in with all your stuff piled around you) it can be relatively pleasant to drive that far, because of all the stuff you get to see along the way.</p>
<p>It was all right. It was better the time I did the trip the other way with my father, because I was getting along with my father better at that point.</p>
<p>We used the family car, which was a station wagon, so we had air conditioning. :) I wouldn't have wanted to do that trip without air conditioning. We didn't take a lot of breaks, because we wanted to make decent time. We got fast food. I will note that my parents have never had a problem throwing all their kids in the car and driving for 14 hours (although when we were very little we did get regular breaks). So I was used to it. We learned a fair amount about one another's music by taking turns with the radio.</p>
<p>It was a two-day trip, though. We went well over halfway there on the first day so we wouldn't be exhausted when we had to start carrying things around, but we stopped around 10 or 11.</p>
<p>The only real problem with the whole trip was that when I was moving in my mother, who thought I would probably never have any friends if she didn't make them for me (my mother has always wanted me to be more social than I am), gave out my room number and phone number to some very nice people who happened to be in a cult. So I got occasional recruitment visits the whole year. But I can't blame that on the distance, you know? :)</p>
<p>I'd buy the stuff I didn't already have when I got there. If you already have some stuff, shipping it isn't too expensive. I've noticed that USPS is usually more expensive than UPS, so you might shop around.</p>
<p>I second the thought that you should buy most of the bigger things there. Especially if you plan on staying at that school for four years. A friend of mine went to school 16 hours away (Notre Dame, from Rhode Island) and what he did was bought all his things in South Bend and during the summer split a storage rental space with a few friends. It's a small price to pay for the convenience.</p>
<p>We did the Bed, Bath and Beyond option where they give you a scanner and you scan the items you want and they have them waiting for you at the BBB closest to your school. My son packed 2 rolling duffels with the rest of his stuff and a laptop backpack on the plane. He ordered the fridge, microwave and rug for the room through a company called dorm supply that set up shop on the campus the first few days. He split the cost with his roommate on those. It all worked out great.</p>
<p>There's no way in heck you'll be able to get a moving and storage company to transport your stuff...it will most likely be cheaper, if for some reason you did this, to re-buy every single thing you had and then some! :(</p>
<p>Even if you were just going 3 hours away and you only had 3 boxes of stuff, you'd be looking at at LEAST $1,000...no joke!</p>
<p>And that's assuming that the driver can get his truck and trailer on campus and to the dorms (NOT gonna happen; another $500). </p>
<p>---my stepdad is a furniture mover, believe me.</p>
<p>Why can't you just check a bag? 50 lbs can get you a long way.
A lot of airlines still allow free checked bags, southwest for example.
Even american is only charging $15 for the first one, which is still a lot cheaper than shipping (and it's still free for the first bag if you bought your ticket before June 14th or so).</p>
<p>Baggage claim really isn't that risky. I fly all the time (every other month or so) since my Dad lives over 1000 miles away. I've been doing this for 8 years, have always checked a bag, and my bag has only gotten lost twice.<br>
Both of those times, it wasn't actually lost- it just got caught up on a connecting flight and the airline was able to get my bag to me within 12 hours (and they brought it to my house).</p>