<p>We're planning to visit colleges in the Northeast during my daughter's spring break. The current plan has us leaving Maryland on Saturday, spending the weekend in NYC, touring UConn on Monday afternoon, UMass on Tuesday, Syracuse on Wednesday, and driving home on Wednesday night. We're now considering adding a drive to Pitt Wednesday, touring PItt on Thursday and then driving home. I know families have done intense road trips like this, but I'm not sure if we'll be brain dead by the last school. We could save Pitt for later on, but it would probably mean having my daughter miss a day of school and the expense of flying. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Wow, okay Pitt is pusing it. :)</p>
<p>However if you are up to it after you visit the other schools go for it. Time like this with your D is awesome (unless neither one of you are talking to each other by then, lol.)!</p>
<p>Actually, your trip sounds very possible. You don’t have more than one college per day on your agenda. My only suggestion…do your driving in the afternoon/evenings so you can be at your destination the night before. It sounds like you can do this with this itinerary. The drive to Pitt will be a long one but it’s doable!! See if you can do a late morning info session/tour of Syracuse on Wednesday so you can get on the road.</p>
<p>Is this your plan…?</p>
<p>Sunday night- Arrive UConn area.</p>
<p>Monday- Tour UConn then leave to drive to UMass. Arrive UMass Monday evening.</p>
<p>Tuesday- Tour UMass. Drive to Syracuse. Arrive Syracuse Tuesday night.</p>
<p>Wednesday- Tour Syracuse. Drive to Pitt. Arrive Pittsburgh Wednesday night.</p>
<p>Thursday- Tour Pitt…drive home.</p>
<p>If so…I think it’s doable. We did two road trips with DD…one was a 7 college in 10 day trip to the southeast…the other a 9 day, 6 college trip to the west coast. As long as you can get from point A to B in a reasonable amount of time AND try not to tour two colleges in the same day…you can do it!!</p>
<p>I did similar trips with my two oldest. One school a day is doable and you can do direct comparisons very well. Your d should take good notes though because they will run together a little! Be sure to stay a night at each college so you can go to dinner and get a glimpse of what it would be like to live there.</p>
<p>I second the advice of driving to your next college destination (or as close to it as you can do with time allotments) the night before. This helps two ways - the first way is that you are more awake and alert for your tour - nothing is worse than a grumpy teenager on a college tour! The second reason is that you can use the captive time in the car to get your teenager’s impressions of the school you just toured in comparison to others you have visited. Now that my younger senior has made his college choice, I will miss the time in the car that resulted in many awesome conversations. BTW. I’ve heard great things about Pitt. If you don’t visit this trip, you should visit another time.</p>
<p>Seems doable to me too. One other piece of advice…If interviews are required, encourage D to interview while she’s there. My D decided to wait, and it was very difficult to get back to long distance schools to interview in the fall of senior year.</p>
<p>I agree it is doable. I also agree with the ONE SCHOOL ONE DAY, and driving to the next location at the end of the visit, so you wake up in your location. When you get there, you can drive around, find a place to eat a late dinner, get an idea of the locale around the school. </p>
<p>Have your student write down thoughts at the end of each stop. That way they don’t run together.</p>
<p>My older child was not interested in touring any schools until after admission…so it was just recently that I learned about how different college tours are from when I was applying to schools, and from when I was giving tours at my undergrad school. Many people just “showed up” and got a tour.</p>
<p>So, be sure to go to each school’s website, and see if you need to “register” for a tour time and/or info. session. </p>
<p>I would think that all schools would be offering tours and info. sessions every day during HS spring break (especially the week before and after Easter)…but you should check to find out specific times. We found that there are also “specialized” tours and info sessions at a bunch of the larger state schools – so that the residence hall tour might be separate from the “campus” tour. Also…if there is a particular area of academic interest, those are often a separate info. session. </p>
<p>So…at one university…we did the general info. session, general tour, residence hall tour, ate lunch on campus and then attended a specific dept. info. session. A long day…and our last day. Fortunately, we did not have to travel too far to fly home.</p>
<p>thumper1’s itinerary is excellent! momjr, you have an ambitious schedule there, but it’s possible. It’s a fairly easy 6-hour drive from Syracuse to Pittsburgh, so you should have a comfortable day touring SU and finding your hotel in the Pitt area. </p>
<p>On one epic college tour, I mis-read a map and was off on one leg by 100 miles. This was before we had a GPS (not that I haven’t had problems with those, too - some people should never leave home under their own steam). Nothing went right on the entire trip, we had torrential rains, and went 36 hours eating nothing but gummi worms and granola bars. Bad planning. But d2 and I love reminiscing about it. Good luck, OP!</p>
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<p>While this may seem like a tempting thing to do…I would caution that using the drive to talk about the colleges might not be something you want to do…unless your KID brings the subject up. We found that our kids did not bring the subject up at all. SO we didn’t either. We also found that OUR opinions on the visits were sometimes in complete contrast to our kids (found that out later) and there’s nothing worse than an disagreement in the car!!</p>
<p>I would let the kid take the lead on any discussions of the campus visits…hard to remember, but it’s the KID who will be going to college. They sometimes need to think about this…not feel they are being grilled about each college you visit together. (not saying you are grilling your kid…but some kids feel this way).</p>
<p>Sounds doable. One tip: Let your kid sleep in a bit in the morning, while you head out to explore for coffee etc, and return to your hotel room to rouse your student around 9 or 10. Most campuses are really dead until at least 10 or 11 am. Take the noon or 1 pm tour if you can, to really get a feel for the livelieness of the campus. You’ll still have time to explore and then get on the road to your next college. Your teenager (unless she’s the rare Morning Teenager) will be more cheerful, and the campuses will be more awake, too.</p>
<p>We just did two-colleges-a-day (two schools in DC; two schools in suburban Phila that are minutes apart) and it was totally fine. We’re going to wind up doing two-colleges-a-day for our spring break trip. When you’re not from an area, sometimes that’s just what you have to do. Once you’ve taken the tour, sat in on the info session (if any), walked around a bit yourself and checked out the place, and seen the surrounding town, what more is there to do?</p>
<p>Thanks for all the suggestions. We do plan to drive to each school the evening before we visit, although we have considered staying in NYC Sunday night and driving to UConn in time for the afternoon session. Does anyone know how much traffic we will hit if we try to drive out of New York City around 9:30 on Monday morning? We’re still unsure about going to Pitt. We are scheduled for an afternoon session at the Newhouse School at Syracuse on Wednesday, so we won’t be able to leave Syracuse until 3:30 or 4:00.</p>
<p>I agree with PizzaGirl. You can do two-a-days if they are not far apart. Go to morning campus at 9 am and get coffee in the student dining hall. Do the tour at 10, you’re out by 12:00 or 12:30. Do the next tour at 2:00, hang out afterwards. Then get in the car and drive to the next day’s destination. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that sometimes your child will take 1 step out the car door and decide he/she hates it and doesn’t want to do the tour. I had that experience with S1 in Hanover, NH. If that is the one school you planned to see that day, your day’s basically shot. In our case we just got back in the car and spent (even) more time at Middlebury, though it could just as easily been Williams or Amherst. So planning two-a-days can keep you from resenting a long drive for nothing. If you are too tired or anything else comes up you can always cancel. </p>
<p>Or, an even easier plan is to see the college in which your child is really interested in the morning. Stay as long as you like. Then, if there’s another school close by and/or en route to your next day’s school, do a “drive-through” or walk-through. Just being on lots of different campuses is very helpful and interesting. One example, S1 and I did that at Bryn Mawr of all places. Obviously it’s an all-women’s school, but we heard it was pretty (and it is!) so we wanted to see it anyway. It was just part of the fabric of our touring experience together.</p>
<p>We did 8 schools in 6 days, but I really suggest one a day. You won’t feel the need to rush and you can really get a feel of the campus. I visited almost near wintertime, so night time fell around 4.30 pm, you might want to take that into consideration as well.</p>
<p>My D and I did 13 schools in 6 days. It really wasn’t that bad, but then she makes judgments pretty fast. We did an info session and then got a cup of coffee at each school and eavesdropped on student conversations. Then we checked out the library and the bulletin boards. We used the bathrooms and read the student graffitti. Then we left. D didn’t care about the dorms or the food (“how bad could it be?”). She wrote down a few things she liked about each school as she left. She even interviewed at Bard, Haverford, and Hampshire. (We left Vassar after 20 minutes and didn’t get out of the car at Amherst.)</p>
<p>One college per day vs two colleges per day is a family decision. I will tell you…in a couple of cases, we took both of our kids to two colleges in one day. Neither had anything positive to say about the afternoon visit at any of the schools. YMMV.</p>
<p>Re: traveling from NYC to UConn…it’s doable…BUT I really would recommend traveling the night before. That way, your student is not sitting in a car for a long drive (it’s not exactly a hop, skip an jump from NYC to UConn) and then sitting for an info session and tour on the same day. Sorry…I just would not recommend it.</p>
<p>I think a student would favor the college he or she saw in the morning…</p>
<p>It seems to me that doing two colleges in one day increases the chances of the refusal to get out of the car at one of them.</p>
<p>If your student is ready to visit a lot of schools, then you can probably follow the good advise above and make it happen. Although summer visits are helpful, you do get a much better vibe when class is in session. You’ll find that senior year is busy (especially if there is a heavy couseload), so getting a head start Junior spring break makes sense.</p>
<p>In our case, my son was still evolving on interests junior year. So for us it worked great to take a 7 day CA trip with just 3 college visits (Cal Tech, Pomona, Harvey Mudd). The rest of the time was spent doing vacations things with him in San Diego and LA. There was lots of time to just relax and talk. It was a lovely vacation and a priceless memory. It was also productive as Mudd became one of his favorite schools and helped us pinpoint college attributes meaningful to him.</p>