For those that are familiar with campus visits:
My son is a possible National Merit Finalist, graduating in 2016. We are planning a week of college visits and plan on visiting OU on Wednesday, October 14.
We would like to visit the Honors College and tour both the National Merit residence and Honors residence dorm options. He is extremely undecided as far as his major so I’m not sure if meeting with an advisor of a specific academic college would be on our list. He is leaning towards becoming a college professor, most likely in math.
I am looking to book a 5:00 p.m. flight leaving that evening out of OKC. In your opinion, does that allow us enough time to do the tour(s) on campus, return our car rental, and catch our flight? We are totally unfamiliar with the area so we don’t know what to expect as far as traffic to the airport and other logistical considerations.
Thank you!
My son & I did that visit this past September in 1/2 of a day - shoe-horned it in around other schools. We left campus at 12:30 PM. Did not get to the dorms but we saw enough dorm rooms/floors at other schools to not worry about it. The (1/2) day itself was outstanding - enough to seal the deal for my son - he will be a NMF @ OU this fall.
I wouldn’t try to do it in 1/2 day for a NMSF. At the very least, they will schedule for an appointment with the NM Scholars Program office to go over scholarship details, a 1/2 hr or so to meet with a Dean of the Honors College, a regular campus tour (that will include seeing a room in the Towers but probably not Boren), and lunch with NM Program office staff and current NMF students. If I were you, I would also go ahead and have them schedule meetings with the math department even if your son is undecided. The campus is about 1/2 hour from the airport except in non-rush hour traffic. I would say that you can probably make a 5:00 pm flight but if I were you, I would just call or email the NM Program office and ask them what they think.
My D is also a potential NMF in the class of 2016 and we spent 2 days (two half days and one very full day) at OU and still have a list of people to meet and things to do on our next. D is interested in multiple minors so that adds many more meetings but I think most people would need at least a full day.
That’s cutting it close, since with traffic it can take up to fifty minutes to get to the airport from Norman.
They should go over the dorms on the tour. If they don’t or you just can’t stick around that long, the school has virtual tours of the rooms in [Cate](http://food.ou.edu/tours/catecenter/) and [Walker[/url] (David Boren has the same floor plan as Cate)
I’ve flown out of OKC a few times. The airport is rather low volume and tries to expedite travel for late passengers. However, I’ve never needed to rent a car. If you’re only going to be there half a day, you may want to consider riding Uber as it’s rather cheap (ccording to the [url=<a href=“https://www.uber.com/cities/oklahoma-city%5DOKC”>https://www.uber.com/cities/oklahoma-city]OKC Cost Calculator](Dining), a trip from Will Rogers to OU costs about $32-34) and will be immediately available for both pickup and drop off.
Correction to my post #2. It took us 1/2 hr to the airport in NON-rush hour traffic. As @whenhen said, I expect it would take significantly longer than 1/2 hour in rush hour.