<p>I can't for the life of me figure out how I am going to pack in as many NE colleges as possible in one week of spring break with D this spring. We'll be coming in from Cal, and want to see top universities and LACs starting in Vt (Middlebury) or Maine (Bowdoin) down to NYC in 7-8 days--any advice to help us plan? If I add the outliers in Western NY state, I think it is impossible to cover in a week, but if anyone can help out it's CCers. Thanks.</p>
<p>Erlinger, we visited 7 schools in 5 days and by the 4th day DS was cranky and mildly uninterested and by the 5th day he never wanted to visit another campus again. We did convince him to visit one other school at the end of the summer and one in Oct. of his Sr. year (which he ended up attending) and I live in the NE! </p>
<p>If I were you I would try to pare down the list your child wants to visit as much as possible. </p>
<p>There are a few threads already on this topic so I suggest you do a search to see what people suggest.</p>
<p>erlanger - We flew into Harford CT, saw Weleyan first and Amherst first. Then up to Wiliams. Then Dartmouth and up to Bowdoin. Then we just came back. It took about 3-4 days. Flying in the Hartford and out of Boston would have made more sense and taken about 3 days.</p>
<p>Erlanger - I would skip Western NY. NY is a big state and driving distances are very far. Is your son really that in love with the area or Cornell, Colgate, Hamilton, etc.?</p>
<p>erlangher: D2 & I are also planning a NE road trip in April. There is no way we can logistically expect to hit all the schools & get any benefit out of all the visits. While she’s done a lot to whittle down her list already, I’m expecting her to take some of the virtual online tours along with a good look at the course catalog in her area of interest. I’m also going to be sending her an email once a week with the high & low temperature for each location along with the snow depth.</p>
<p>Narrowing down choices makes sense, but for the famous prom dress story. It’s about going to look for the perfect dress, and sometimes while the first one looks terrific, we keep looking for something “better” at many more stores, before finally deciding the first one was the best choice. It will be tough to resist the idea of seeing “as many as we can,” but I do understand that after a few, we will be cranky and ready to pack it in. Thanks for the insights.</p>
<p>I think the Western NYS schools are clearly worth looking at. If you try, you can squeeze 2/day in. Rochester or Binghamton & Cornell; Syracuse/Rensellear. Just watch your speed on Interstate 90 - when we did that trip in Nov2009, it seemed like there were speed traps every 10 miles. (We were looking at big schools w engineering programs, not sure where smaller LACs are located).</p>
<p>erlanger: It’s possible to see a lot in that amount of time but I’d schedule some as drive by. Definitely only one formal info session/tour per day and at some less selective schools just skip the info session. Western NY is a long way from Maine by car. And for sure don’t try to make a loop, fly in at one end and out from the other. This is what we did when we flew across country to CA and it worked pretty well. </p>
<p>And if your teen says “I hate this place and want to leave NOW,” don’t say as some have recommended (paraphrasing): “Why you ungrateful child, this is an excellent university and you will happily examine every nook and cranny of it.” Say “OK.” You’ll be that much closer to your next destination by nightfall and the set of applications that much more manageable. And you’ll have plenty of time in the car to learn the reasons why - makes for good conversation!</p>
<p>I think as some have mentioned, the key is SLEEP. I’m embarking on a Northwestern (Friday), CMU (Monday), Cornell (Tuesday), Princeton (Wednesday), UPenn (Thursday), and MIT (Friday). DD is going to be sitting in on a class at each school with the exception of CMU (Spring Break). She had the burnout last time but she was tagging along with me on a business trip and I was going at a frenetic pace between my appointments/schedule and making visits to campuses. D is pretty good at being focused when we have a little “pep talk” prior to the visit and talk strategy about being observant, asking questions, etc. She sees this as her final swing at getting to know the schools and considering it an interview from her end as to if she would like to go there or not. Oh, and eat healthy foods, I noticed last time that if we were eating diner/fast food - her attitude tanked.</p>
<p>we flew into NY from Cal, drove north to Yale, saw Brown, Tufts , turned west and hit a bunch of colleges north and south of 90 over 5 days, flew out of Syracuse back to JFK and then home. We were gone about 8 days total. LOTS of driving- son got a chance to practice driving and to scare mom out of her mind a few times!
I will say that I think it may be a waste of time to visit the reachiest-reach U’s- those that have single digit acceptance rate . Its hard not to fall in love with some of the top colleges back east, those with beautiful campuses and where the chances of rejection are 90% or better. Those college visits are best saved until a fat envelope actually arrives in April, imho.
make it hard to find that more perfect match or safety where he would be happy to go AND has a good chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>Op - Would it be possible to tour any local colleges to get a better idea of general priorities for the NE tour?</p>
<p>With my oldest on a vacation week trip we did 10 formal tours and about another 10 drive-by/quick walk-throughs. We scheduled 2 schools a day for formal visits … lots of folks on CC do not recommend 2 tours a day but my daughter found it worked fine (if pushed for time we skipped info sessions; we found them to typically be a waste of time). In addition to the formal tours we typical could quickly check out a couple other schools in the area each day. While I agree this was a lot of schools and not ideal we only had a week to look at schools and it seemed silly to be 5 miles from a school and to not check it out.</p>
<p>This is exactly the reason my Cal D did not even consider VT or ME for college. Too hard to get to.</p>
<p>For the actual “nitty gritty” of reservations and such, I would strongly recommend posting questions on trip advisor dot com. Couldn’t have done college tours without it - the passion and generosity of the experts in each city is mind boggling. Just make sure to do a search on the forum of your target city first - you are not the first to try these tours! In terms of fitting it, I would think of the trip like a tree. Pick the first two, and based on those two, add and subtract others. We visited schools we had not intention of seeing based on our impressions of the first few, skipped a couple for the same reason. Don’t even consider traveling without a laptop as a research tool, or at minimum an ipad. I never take my laptop travelling anymore, but for a college tour it was absolutely essential so that my daughter and I could research the “next” school. We also wrote quick emails to ourselves as trip reports after each visit before they all blended together!!</p>
<p>I have to agree that touring some of the tippy top schools can be a disadvantage. D decided to look at some of her safety schools but as far as those tippy top reach schools she decided to wait and see if she was accepted. It saved us lots of time and money. She visited the schools for admitted student days and then picked her top choice.</p>
<p>Is this too ambitious? Am I crazy?
Fly Syracuse, see Cornell, Colgate, Hamilton (2 Days); drive to Trinity/Amherst (1 Day); up to Williams/Middlebury (1 Day); down to Boston for BU/Tufts/BC/Northeastern (2 days); last stretch: Brown/Wesleyan (1 Day)</p>
<p>Wow, I get tired just thinking about it.</p>
<p>I think it’s doable if you expect not to do the full tour/information session at all schools. If you get to a school and don’t much like the feel of it, don’t spend time there trying to like it better. You’ll pretty quickly get a feel for what your kid likes and doesn’t. For example, both my kids decided pretty quickly that they liked a school with a central campus feel, which BU doesn’t really have, so we took a 15 minute stroll around the campus and left to find something to eat. Northeastern is also quite urban, so if I were planning the trip I would probably do Tufts and BU in one day and BC and Northeastern in another, figuring that we’d be able to skip the tour at one of those schools each day. That would make your 2 days in Boston fine, since all those schools can be easily reached on the T. I don’t know about the other parts of your trip, but I do know that trying to do 2 full tours a day, plus travel time, for multiple days will quickly lead to burn-out.</p>
<p>A few random thoughts & comments:</p>
<ul>
<li>Are you sure all the schools have AM & PM admissions sessions/tours (assuming you want that and not just drive-by or self-directed)?</li>
<li>Is flying into Ithaca an option? (if so, you could get Cornell & easily drive to Colgate/Hamilton, this will cut down on your drive.)</li>
<li>Middlebury is your outlier and will take up lots of driving time. (2.5 hours from Williams - it this a top pick? If I had to skip any school, this would be it for logistics)</li>
<li>I would swing by Williams on way in from NY State, then on to Amherst.</li>
<li>1 hour between Hartford to Amhearst - check if there is construction on I-91. Getting in/out out of Hartford can suck.</li>
<li>Wesleyan is just 30 minutes south of Hartford, so that’s a natural after Trinity. (see above comment on Hartford traffic - it’s worse heading south)</li>
<li>They swing over to Brown.</li>
<li>End in Boston. Will be easier to get a flight home.</li>
<li>4 schools in 2 days in Boston is doable. We stayed at the Residence Inn at Cambridge and loved the space and full kitchen, plus the parking was convenient - it might have been free! Take a cab over to BU & Northeastern - parking is limited and expensive near both.</li>
</ul>
<p>Hope this helps - You will be exhausted, but if you have stamina and it’s your only Northeast trip, you can make it work. </p>
<p>I would lLay it out on Google maps to see where logical overnights are. We typically found it was better to drive to where we had our AM visits, so we weren’t rushed in the morning packing up the car.</p>
<p>I’d recommend switching Trinity/Amherst with Williams/Middlebury since you’ll be coming from NY State. Actually, if you’re going to do Trinity, do it in conjunction with Wesleyan since they’re both in CT. Williams is relatively close to Amherst.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>The best tip <em>I</em> got when we did these college road trips…get TO your destination the night before. It’s far more pleasant to wake up and just go to the tour(s) than it is to get up, drive several hours and then go to a tour.</p>
<p>In my opinion, you cannot see Wesleyan and Brown on the same day. By the time you leave one tour aftert the a.m. tour…and drive lickety split to the next place, the next tour will be well started…and you won’t even have time for lunch.</p>