Hi, new member here and parent to a junior. This is our oldest kid and we are doing the northeast college tour this June. We are flying from the Chicago area. Any suggestion on itinerary? Where to fly to? We plan to rent a car. Once we get to the area. We are thinking of looking at Penn, Columbia, NYU, Swarthmore, Princeton and Yale. Thank you.
My suggestion would be to fly into Philly – look at Penn and Swarthmore, then drive to Princeton, then onward to NYC for Columbia and NYU, and then up the coast to Yale. It would be possible, and perhaps preferable, to take the commuter train round trip to New Haven and then fly out of NYC. OTOH, once you are in Connecticut, you might also want to see Connecticut College, Wesleyan and Trinity, which you cannot easily do via train. And you might want to drive up the Hudson Valley and see Vassar. There are other colleges in the metro Philadelphia area that might warrant a look also.
Thanks for the suggestion. Are trains to New Haven more cost efficient than driving? I checked the Philly-NY train and with three of us, it seems driving is more cost efficient.
Philly - NY is Amtrak and more expensive than the metro north commuter rail between new haven and NYC
You could easily do the whole route by train, but if you decide you want a car because it’s cheaper or more flexible you want either to pick it up after New York or drop it off when you get there. A car in NYC is more of a burden than a convenience, parking is costly and driving can be stressful.
If your child is interested Swarthmore, you might also fit in some other small liberal arts colleges that are quite close to the colleges on your list like Haverford, Wesleyan, Barnard (if you have a daughter). Also, Williams and Amherst a few hours north of Yale.
I guess you’re aware that these are all very selective colleges. If your child is interested in looking at matches and safeties in the area you could easily add a few of those as well.
Interesting mix of schools. Has your son/daughter decided on size, campus type or any of that? My son graduated from Penn. My daughter is a junior. I agree with those who suggested flying into Philly and then driving North. Depending on how much time you have, consider seeing some other schools in the area - also previously suggested. Enjoy!
Thanks for the suggestions. My son is still unsure of what he wants - both in size, urban/suburban/rural., major (he has three choices now). We are looking at a few schools this spring break within driving distance (ND, Michigan, CWRU). Last summer he tagged along with his cousin and looked at a few schools here in Illinois.
The big schools will be lively enough in June, but Swarthmore will likely be pretty quiet and it will be tough to get the student vibe during June.
Consider flying in and out of NYC, and then you won’t really need a rental car at all. Use NYC as your hub, subway to Columbia, another one to NYU. Then, take Amtrak to New Haven for a day trip to Yale. Princeton is an hour on NJ Transit (cheaper than Amtrak) from NYC, and Philly is another hour from P’ton on SEPTA (commuter rail). Penn is blocks from where Amtrak train comes in from, Swarthmore is off the commuter train line, so you can grab a train to Swat and back. Or you could rent a car and drive to P’ton and Philly.
Driving in and out of NYC for Columbia and NYU is not for the faint of heart. I am from the area, and still find it very stressful not to mention the traffic is always a challenge.
Another conversation would be why those schools – among best advice we got first time around was find your safety and match schools first, then you can add in the reaches.
If you are in the midwest, visits to U Chicago and Northwestern will give your student a good sense of how they respond to certain types of schools/environments.
It’s easy to look at 4 Ivies and a similar caliber school (Swat). What’s not to like? But I would suggest you consider a broader range so you don’t wind up with a list of all super reaches.
We have looked at UChicago and Northwestern. He liked them both. The safety is U of I and possibly Purdue or UW. His guidance counselor said that he should be able to get into those schools with his ACT and GPA. The counselor suggested we look out East also since he liked UChicago and Northwestern. He would be happy attending any of the schools he visited. I wish his list is limited or that he has a specific type (urban vs suburban, small vs large etc) but I believe him when he says he can see himself in the schools we visited thus far.
Sounds like urban large is his thing – so next filter would be to consider, perhaps, the “academic personality” of the place. U Penn has more dominant stronger science-y/engineering feel, Yale not so much (and, in our experience of the kids they accept, reaches out to the hard science/engineering kid). P’ton does a good job, in my view, of balancing sciences/engineering and humanities/social sciences in the feel of campus – at the same time, P’ton is a charming town, but not the same urban feel as the others. Columbia does have a campus, with gorgeous quad etc., whereas NYU’s campus is the Village and its “quad” is Washington Sq Park.
My own guess is that a kid who likes Chicago is not likely to respond to the ND vibe – something like 80% of the ND undergrads were Varsity athletes in high school, many still continue to play in inter-hall competitions, and game day is BIG BIG BIG. But then again, you say your son says he can see himself at a number of different types of places, so perhaps he wouldn’t react strongly to differences in campus culture.
Good luck on your search, it is a fun, infuriating time to spend with your kid.
Driving is really fine, as long as you don’t try to do something like drive through NYC in the middle of rush hour. I suspect, though, that if you add two days of parking in NYC to the analysis, the train/drive calculation gets much closer. Once you are in NYC, you will want to use public transportation, not drive. Just park once!
Also, if you want a taste of the real, student-level experience, you can take a bus to NYC from just outside the Penn campus for $10-$12. These are comfortable, double-decker buses with free wi-fi. Not as fast as the Amtrak trains, but perfectly good value if you aren’t billing your time at $500/hour. Or, you can take commuter trains to NYC – it’s about $30 round trip, takes 2-1/2 hours, and less comfortable than Amtrak.
You could, if you planned things carefully, avoid renting a car in Philadelphia. There are commuter train stations on campus at Penn, Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr. But there’s really no compelling reason to do that, especially in June when parking will be relatively easy on all the campuses.
It’s usually cheaper to fly into and out of the same airport, so you should probably plan to use Newark or Philadelphia for that purpose. Nothing is that far away from anything else in this part of the world, except for the effect of traffic. And the effect of traffic is such that, by the time you get to La Guardia or Kennedy, you might just as well have gone to Philadelphia.
Other places to look at in the same general vicinity and taste range: Haverford/Bryn Mawr (in the Philadelphia suburbs), Ursinus (in the somewhat farther away Philly suburbs), Sarah Lawrence (just over the border into Westchester County from the Bronx), Vassar and Bard (a trek up the Hudson Valley from NYC), Wesleyan (a 15-20 minute drive from Yale), Trinity (45 minute drive from Yale). You could also take a day from Philadelphia and go down to Baltimore to look at Johns Hopkins, which is a good fit with the rest of your list. But don’t overdo it. If you look at too many colleges in too few days, they are all going to blur together anyway.
I agree with JHS, there is no real reason to avoid renting a car in Phila and I think relying on the trains to go out to Sat / Haverford / etc is doable but not flexible. The other way you could do things is do Philly, then drive THROUGH NYC and up to Yale / Connecticut, then circle back down to NYC, return your car in Manhattan and spend a few days in New York and then fly out of one of the NY-based airports.
Look into flights and rates on Frontier, which flies in and out of the Trenton airport, especially if you are planning to rent a car.They are often very inexpensive. The airport is minutes from Princeton, and less than an hour from central P. I suspect rates are lower for cars there than hilly. You can also catch a SEPTA train into Philly from the West Trenton station, just down the road (a short cab trip). Parking garages are plentiful and inexpensive in Philly - check online for coupons. I don’t know what Penn offers in the way of validation for admissions visitors.
Oh, there are often very good deals for hotels in Philly on Living Social and Groupon, if Penn doesn’t have promotional group rates for overnight. The same for NYC. As for the Trenton airport, it is right off of the I-95 spur (not the regular NJ Turnpike I-95), but it’s easily accessible to NYC. New Haven doesn’t have much to recommend it, for an overnight visit, but there are some very nice coastal towns nearby. Otherwise, I would make Yale a day-trip from NYC. For family visits in NYC, I have had good luck with Hotel Wellington - they often have great deals on spacious suites. The Belleclaire, on Broadway at 79th, gives you a little Upper West Side flavor. It is very accessible to Columbia by bus or subway, and you could even walk (about 2 miles) if the weather is good and you wanted to explore.
Thank you all for the suggestions and comments. These are good starting points for research. My kid handles the college research and I just handle the logistics for trips. We had the cost discussion and the counsellor requires them to have safeties and matches. I am just along for the ride.
I’ll put in my pitch for Temple as a safety, if your kid wants an urban setting. They provide merit scholarships for out-of-state students, and the price-tag is considerably lower than private colleges. If you like Philly when you visit Penn, it might appeal.
If I’m not mistaken, the car rental rates from NYC are much higher than from just about any place else! While you might want to rent while in Philly, just to be able to visit Swarthmore and surrounds, including Princeton, I would turn that car in and take the train to NY and visit colleges using local transport (and avoiding traffic, parking, etc.). Then you can take Metro North (New Haven Line, from Grand Central) to New Haven (about 1.5 hrs.), rent a car there and continue your tour of upstate New York and New England, possibly circling back or else having one-way drop somewhere.