the biggest issue I see is the transportation from the middle of Iowa (Grinnell) to Vermont. I don’t see how that can be accomplished in under a full day (Grinnell to Ohare? to Detroit to Vermont? maybe have to go Ohare to Boston/Hartford, then to Vermont?). I’d also suggest you do Mac for a day, then Carleton, and not drive back and forth. I’d probably fly into MSP, do that, drive to Carleton, do that, drive to Grinnell, do that and then fly away.
If it is ‘spring break’ that can still mean a snowstorm in Minnesota, Iowa, or Vermont.
I looked up the flights when I came up with the plan, trying to get nonstop where I could. I was shocked to find that the flight from Des Moines to Burlington was a pretty reasonable fare, that’s why I chose that odd leg. It departs at Des Moines at 4:30 & arrives Burlington 9:39 for $243 (only 38 minutes in Detroit!! is that crazy to try?). It’s a slog to then drive an hour to Middlebury, but the tour isn’t until 10:00 am.
I hadn’t thought of driving to Grinnell - I’ll look into that. I’m not a huge fan of over really long drives, but it would definitely be cheaper.
And - ugh - on snowstorm! I haven’t driven in the snow in 30 years. That would be a huge bummer!
Any sightseeing ideas in Minneapolis?
Should we self-tour Mac or Carleton on Sunday instead of trying to do both guided tours on Monday before leaving for Des Moines (7:40 pm flight)?
@Dustyfeathers We definitely plan on touring Mt Holyoke. We might fit Beloit in when we do Chicago over the summer, along with Lawrence (which will still be in classes in early June - woo hoo!)
Don’t get me wrong, I love college visiting. It’s a great time to spend time with just one kid. And I love traveling. But I could not imagine visiting more than one school per day, or more than 6 on a trip. Me and my kid would be cranky. (I have two kids, one finished with college and the other a freshman in college.) The whole process lends itself to crankiness, so why kick it off with the college tours? Enjoy this time. Visit the colleges not high on the list online. If there are some favorites, place high priority on those. But there is no reason to kill yourself. 16 colleges in 2 weeks, ugh, I would go home after the first week.
A lot of good advice here. The only thing I would add? Be willing to take a school off the list and give yourselves a break if you feel burnout setting in. Good luck. There are a lot of great schools on your list.
Grinnell is harder to get to then you think. Flights are often cancelled out of Des Moines. It took 3 attempts to get my son in for a visit. He missed accepted students day, but got a flight out the next day from Baltimore to Las Vegas to Des Moines. He loved Grinnell and is currently a sophmore.
He is also currently stuck on campus, his flight out this morning was cancelled and he will try again tomorow morning. This means the 3 am shuttle from campus again. The flight home from Fall break took 19 hrs, could have driven it in 14.
With all that said, he loves Grinnell and couldn’t see himself anywhere else, but if you can drive that leg of your trip it might be better.
We did four in two days - BC, BU, Tufts, and Northeastern. These are all pretty close and we used public transportation. Two morning tours/sessions and two afternoon tours/sessions. We felt a little rushed and barely had time for lunch (the train rides to BC and BU took longer than I had expected.) However, we did get a very good idea of what each of the four schools were like, and a good overall feel for the city.
We also did Lafayette, Muhlenberg, and Lehigh over 2 days. (a different trip at another time) We did a morning at Lafayette and an afternoon at Muhlenberg and that was fine. The second day we stopped at Lehigh for a quick look around (they had no tours or sessions that day). This trip worked out fine (despite a pretty sleazy hotel and one member of our party getting food poisoning).
We also did GW and American over 2 days (if memory serves me right) and that worked out fine (again a separate trip)
Get a car mount (usually a suction cup windshield mount) for your smartphone, plus a long USB cable. Google Maps & Yelp were invaluable for navigating & finding nearby restaurants during our college visits roadtrip.
Don’t visit the posh dream schools first. If you do, everything afterwards will seem shabby.
@Mom24boys Oh Geez… do you think mid April would be bad? I really don’t want to drive 4 hours from Minneapolis. Would driving be better in bad weather than trying to fly? There seem to be flights out of MSP frequently, if we didn’t pick the last flight. Maybe we should allow a whole day to get to Vermont and skip Skimme
Grinnell only has one tour a day, at 10:00. I guess we would drive as far as I could from Minneapolis, and then the rest of the way in the morning, before 10:00.
So much to consider, also having only 38 minutes to change plans in Detroit coming from Des Moines to Vermont is pretty hairy. Especially if Des Moines departures are not reliable.
@MaelstromMonkey Oh yes! I just upgraded our cell phone plan to unlimited streaming and data so that we’d have GPS. I learned the hard way on a trip last year when all my data was used up in the first few hours of a multi day trip!
@LBowie We are visiting Whitman, Lewis&Clark, Willamette and Reed first, in that order. Her favs right now are Whitman, Reed, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Macalester, Scripps and UChicago. Which is why I am trying to squeeze Twin Cities AND So Cal into this trip.
Drive from Northfield (Carleton) to Minneapolis airport: 45 minutes.
Get to the airport at least 1 1/2 hours ahead of time: 1.5 hours.
Fly from Minneapolis to Des Moines: 1 hour.
Drive from Des Moines to Grinnell: 1.0 hour.
That’s more than four hours. Driving from Northfield to Grinnell might be easier and take less time and it will certainly cost less.
@rosered55 Yes, I see your point. How I see it is 2.5 of those hours would be NOT driving. I guess I could suck it up to save a big chunk of money and just get on the road right after Carlton. I was thinking we could start the day at Carleton, end up at Mac, then we’re 15 min from the airport. But if I drove partway and then we found a hotel when I started zoning out, and resumed driving in the morning… I just looked at Google Maps, which road is faster/better: 35 or 56? Have you done the drive?
Are flights from MSP to Des Moines reliable? Or is it just departing on time from Des Moines I need to worry about?
16 schools in 14 days is a helluva lot of time & money. Check each school’s Common Data Set (section C7), to see if “demonstrated interest” is even considered for admission. If it’s not, then it might make more sense to just apply sight-unseen, then visit the school if child is admitted.
Google: “Common Data Set <>”
Program in some fun activities during the trip. When we were in Seattle, we did the Boeing factory tour.
We did 7 schools in 5 days, doubling up on two days. It was a fantastic experience for my husband, daughter and I Make sure that you can actually get to each school in time for the organized tours. Our experience wa that we needed at least 45 minutes for the information session and then up to 2 hours for the tours. After going on several tours we decided to cancel the unguided tour as we realized how helpful it was to have someone to answer all the little questions we had about each school. Also, after each day we sat at lunch and/or dinner with a notebook and took notes about each school we saw before the next school so that they didn’t blend together (too much). We wrote about what we saw, who we spoke to, the vibe at each school and ANYTHING else we could think about. It really helped later when we were back home reviewing the trip and making decisions. Enjoy!
Although it says that demonstrated interest is not considered, I’m guessing that if you express a strong interest, it would be hard to ignore. This is NYC person talking and nothing (nothing) can be had here in this location, with too many people and too few resources, if we paid attention to “no demonstrated interest”.
We demonstrate interest if indeed we are interested. In NYC that often means getting up at 4:00 am and standing in line for something, but you know, we show interest. We make sure that this happens in fact and treat the “demonstrated interest not considered” checkmarked box as a deft way of keeping those not truly interested away. Which just means there’s more room for us, we, who demonstrate interest.
i would advise my kids that if they’re interested in a place to show interest. Genuine, real, heartfelt interset.
This is a courtship, both ways. Would you continue to court a person who doesn’t show a lot of interest? No you would not. I’m about to get all matchmaker on you.
Then again, things might be (and are probably) different elsewhere: The meaning here is: take my advice with a shaker of salt. But why not show interest? it seems an easy thing to do.
