OHIO Road Trip with Junior daughter - comments or ON the Route add-on's welcomed

Parents Forum
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Flying into DC 10/21 to visit OHIO schools (junior daughter wants snow- whatever!). Denison, Ohio Wesleyan, Wooster, Oberline, Kenyon, and Wittenberg. Popping over the Ohio State just to go see a mega 70k student school too. Routing up to Rock and Roll Hall of fame on the weekend so then hitting Allegheny in PA on our way down to DC to visit George Mason, do a White House tour (all arranged) and fly out of DC 11/3. We have Lynchburg College and William and Mary in our sites but will be in DC area this summer so will visit those then.

Daughter is Junior with 3.6 GPA, mid SAT’s (to be determined but based on her PSAT and practice tests), nice EC, Third Culture Kid (born in Guatemala, lived in US, Japan and in Europe now at an American DOD high school), with interesting life story, and heartfelt solid recommendations. Wants “something with not to much math and science” as her college studies. All around great applicant to any LAC.

Daughter reviewed each tour times schedule, made a chart and map to figured out the times we can visit with enough wandering around time to be able to do more than buzz in and out for the tour and info and interviews. FYI -This should be an activity for every college bound Junior - it took 2+ hours to gather and chart. Good for her!

Open to any other schools that are on the route … as much as we had already toyed with a run to Birmingham Southern and to Center College in Kentucky and on and on… I really want to keep the route tight and focused with plenty of coffee shop stops to reflect and enjoy the college towns. As we all know, there are 2,864 colleges we could potentially visit…!

PS - this trip was planned for last spring break but last minute daughter announced that she wasn’t ready to start looking. Good for her - great for me as I didn’t think so either. Now she is ready and motivated.

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Fun local flavor close to Wittenberg: Stop at Young’s Dairy for ice cream. It is a popular student destination (UDayton, Wright state, etc also) on weekends late at night. It gets plenty of love from the locals at all other hours. You can have lunch or dinner there as well but the ice cream is the important part.

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I can only help with the Oberlin part of the trip. Eat at the Feve (pronounced “fev”) and the Black River Cafe. There’s only one hotel in Oberlin, the expensive, rebuilt, and pretentiously named Hotel at Oberlin, but it’s very nice.

The art museum is great if your daughter likes art!

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You’re not far from Earlham (Richmond, Indiana ) and like several on your list, it’s a CTCL. We really loved this one when we visited – genuinely warm and kind, and DS said the classroom participation was lively. Real focus on teaching. Her world view would be a nice fit as it has a lot of diversity. They give good merit aid. (We did this one on a similar tour.) You’re in the neighborhood!

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Not sure how much flexibility you are considering in re-aligning the list – you might swap out Earlham for Ohio Wesleyan (Earlham is about 90 minutes west of Columbus/OSU) or consider whether Ohio Wesleyan fits with the rest of your list, as it seems like a bit of an outlier in terms of campus culture. Similarly, not sure how your PA drive is, but I think Dickinson (about an hour west of Harrisburg) could be stop on your way from Alleghany to DC.

Double check eligibility for on-campus interviews for a fall semester junior, I thought many schools don’t start interviews until spring of junior year, but I could be misremembering.

Denison: stay at Buxton Inn, Granville Inn, or the Loft/Broadway Guest House to enjoy the charms of Granville, rather than staying a few miles away. Whits custard is not to be missed. The Village Coffee Shop has good coffee, bagels etc. Day y Noche is good for lunch and dinner, as is Broadway Pub and Brews (last two are pastas, burgers, fish, steak etc). On campus, hang out at Slayter to people watch and see the range of student types. If your daughter is at all artsy, contact the Studio Art department to see if you can get a tour of Bryant Arts building – fabulous facility.

Kenyon: not much in Gambier, though the coffee shop across from Middle Path is good coffee and good people watching. Closest hotels are Mt Vernon, about 10 minutes away.

Wooster – St Paul Hotel is a chic, European style renovation of a 1900s building, same block as some great food – for a splurge, City Steakhouse is wonderful, my son was in heaven there. Some very hip restaurants on the same block, felt like a little stretch of Brooklyn had been dropped into Wooster. I believe the grab-and-go food places on campus, as well as the convenience store in the dining hall building, only take cash or flex points, so put some money in your wallet.

Oberlin: we stayed at the Back House Cottage, about 4-5 block walk south of campus, charming mini-apt, with a queen sized bed, sitting room and kitchen. They can set up sofa in sitting room as an extra bed, if you request. The Feve, and Aladdin’s (I think it’s called that) great food options. Look for albino squirrels on the Commons, and check out the painted rock.

Have fun! We have great memories of college visit road trips!

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You might also consider Baldwin Wallace. It’s about 30 minutes from Oberlin heading towards Cleveland. Berea is nice and the campus is beautiful. They’re strong in music, musical theater, and some other things.

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re: @Midwestmomofboys’ comment. Over the summer, we visited Denison and stayed at the Granville Inn. It was one of the nicest hotels we’ve stayed in recently. One of the desk staff told me that the Inn is now owned by Denison and that the Denison rate was even lower than the hotels.com rate we used, so be sure to ask for it. We also visited Oberlin, Wooster, Earlham, and Case Western (the big outlier) on that trip. Wooster came out on top for S18 and Oberlin and Case dropped off his list. Passed through Gambier on our way just to see what everyone talks about when they say it’s isolated: we agreed.

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Mount Vernon Inn is a nice family-run establishment with great hot breakfast if you are planning to stay near Gambier. “The Dairy” also in Mt. Vernon serves enormous ice cream cones the size of your head for less than 2 bucks.

At Oberlin, second the Feve and Aladdin’s. I think Black River Cafe might be under new management - check reviews. We stayed at Buckeye and the Frog, a charming B&B very close to the Oberlin campus.

The Vietnamese restaurant in Granville is good and inexpensive.

At Wooster, try the Black Squirrel Inn for lodging.

Have fun! We loved our Ohio trip.

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Are you driving near Dickinson? That sounds like a good fit.

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If you are near Dayton, the National Museum of the US Air Force is a great stop that is near the expressway. They are open daily from 9 to 5 with free admission, and it is a top notch museum.

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil

http://www.nmusafvirtualtour.com/full/tour-std.html

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^ IMO a better aircraft history and display than the Smithsonian. If you decide to visit Earlham you’ll be passing just north of it while Witt is about 45 mins east.

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Check out Dickinson and Gettysburg on the way out or back.

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We did a fantastic tour of school in the Lehigh valley in PA and loved almost every LAC we saw. If Gettysburg is near I would definitely recommend it.

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I found Winestein in Mount Vernon (near Kenyon) to be an excellent restaurant. In fact, it’s the main reason I was bummed that my D chose Oberlin.

At Oberlin, I agree that the Feve and Aladdin’s are excellent. The Black River Cafe as recently as May was great too (I hadn’t heard of new management and heaven’t been there since May). The Slow Train Cafe and Agave Burrito were also delicious (although not as quite good as the others). In short, there’s no shortage of great food at Oberlin.

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If you do go to Dayton check out University of Dayton. Beautiful campus!!

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Daughter in 2nd year at Baldwin Wallace. Small town, pretty campus still close to big city opportunities of Cleveland. Enthusiastic alumni, lots of merit scholarship awards. Daughter is in conservatory (music therapy) but they are also well regarded in business, education, liberal arts, et al.

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If you’re willing to drive 10-15 minutes there are decent chain hotels outside of Oberlin.

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Well, if you stay in Cleveland after R&R Hall of Fame visit, I can tell you some hotels NOT to stay in. My preference is the Marriott Courtyard University Circle, and btw there are some nice restaurants near Case Western (a university that I assume is of no interest to your daughter). But you are probably beating it out of Cleveland. Oh well.

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Heading from Cleveland to DC-- I’d toss Juniata into the mix

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If you should be driving from Columbus to Cincinnati or vice versa on I-71, you could do worse than to eat at the Golden Lamb in Lebanon. It is supposedly Ohio’s oldest continually operating business and has hosted quite a few famous personages, including a number of presidents, former presidents, or presidents-to-be.