<p>I would strongly recommend getting out of NYC on Sunday night. There are various highways up to UConn out of NYC but it can be killer (and often is). You don’t want to start off the week sitting in traffic on the Hutch and I95. It’s very painful. Without traffic, it’s an easy ride.</p>
<p>I would chat with my D about the colleges we saw while driving to the next. Not the entire time. Just get some impressions. Even before that, watch and listen to them on the tour. We went to many schools before she found some she loved. It was music to my ears when we were at one school and she looked at me anxiously and asked, “Mom, do you think I can get in here?” We are now hoping for a decision to that school - hopefully this week.</p>
<p>Enjoy the car time. I loved it. We will probably go to one or two accepted student days/weekends and that’ll be it. Looking forward to doing this with my son soon (he’s a HS freshman). They grow up so fast…</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr was our second-school-of-the-day (you can guess what the first one was!) and D fell in love. </p>
<p>For those of us who don’t live near, we’d never get it all done if we did one a day. For spring break, we are going to do 2 a day for 3 days … then an OH trip to fit two more in one day … then a MN trip to fit two more in one day. With twins, I don’t have a lot of choices!</p>
<p>Its very doable. We live in the middle of the country and did a trip to the NE where we saw 9 schools in 4 days across several states which included PA, NY, MA, CT, and NH. It helped that we flew into PA and out of NH so we didn’t have to back track. We often saw 2-3 per state. Some schools we just drove through campus and D did not like it at all so we moved on.</p>
<p>My D attended the info sessions and did the tour unless after the info session she knew it was not for her. Also, be aware that if you are touring on weekends, many schools have no tours on Saturdays and Sundays–or only have 1 per month. I also think you should pay attention to the kids gut feel. If they instantly get out of the car and hate it, move on. It doesn’t get better with more exposure. I learned that lesson well which could have saved us some time.</p>
<p>I also think it can be beneficial to take them to a school that you feel is right but they don’t want to visit. My D had no interest in Duke, but I thought it would be a good fit for her. I bullied her into seeing it and now its one of her favorites.</p>
<p>Sometimes we were not able to get an official tour, but could always download campus maps in the library at the schools. In that situation, talking to people on campus can be really helpful. </p>
<p>We also made sure to talk to the students that we saw. My D asked about their classes and experiences. You learn so much from the people that you interact with. Libraries are important if your student plans to study there. </p>
<p>One last suggestion. If touring on a weekend during a big sport season beware in case the whole campus is away at a game. We toured Wake Forest on a Saturday morning tour. We did not see a soul on campus between 9AM and noon. They were all at an away game or sleeping. She could not get a feel for that school so crossed it off her list.</p>
<p>Have your kid bring a notebook and take some notes on each school as you leave–impressions, likes/dislikes. It can all get jumbled together if they don’t. This will be really valuable when they come back to it at application time.</p>
<p>OP, I am from that general area and those plans seem doable. But if you get into Pitt very late at night, just make sure you don’t have an early morning tour the next day.</p>
<p>We are headed to see 8 schools in 6 days (across 3 states.) I tried to do only one school a day, but in two cases there are schools literally a few blocks away from each other, so we are seeing both while we are in that city. </p>
<p>I worry that my kid might burn out, and if so, we can adjust our plans, but in some cases we will be passing through some college towns on our way driving to other schools. It seems silly not to at least get out and see those schools while we are in those towns, even if we don’t do both the info session and tour at each.</p>
<p>Also, some of the additional schools are safeties, and I think it’s important to see those in addition to just the most desirable ones, especially since we have found some hidden gems in the past and want him to have a well-rounded list.</p>
<p>Thanks again for all the suggestions. We will be doing all the tours on weekdays, so we won’t have to worry about quiet weekend campuses. We have already done some tours at schools in our area, and fortunately my daughter enjoys them. I’m the one who gets tired after hearing all the repetitive information sessions. </p>
<p>I know that kids make quick decisions, but we did have an interesting experience at one area school. My daughter was very turned off by the busy traffic around the perimeter of the campus, but loved the school once we took the tour and saw how nice the central campus was.</p>
<p>I disagree with the people who say to leave NYC on Sunday night. I think your idea to leave on Monday morning is a better one. Who wouldn’t want an extra evening in NYC?? Plus, Sunday evening traffic can be bad as well. You should be okay leaving the city at 9:30 Monday morning, but the traffic in the region is always unpredictable, so leave an extra 1/2 hour minimum (an hour would be even better) as a cushion for delays.</p>
<p>We did 11 schools in 7 days. We visited NY, MA, PA, RI. I would suggest getting you and your DD a steno pad- something to write the pros and cons of each school. Dh and and I would put our own thoughts down without letting our DS know what we thought of a school. I would also take a camera and take pictures. You may get strange looks from the people, but when it came time for my DS to write why he liked school x, all he had to do was review his notes and look at the pictures. It brought everything back… including the memories of seeing two schools a day!</p>
<p>SDONCC,
Thanks for adding your opinion. We would prefer to have the extra time in New York. I think we’ll take the risk of missing the Information Session at UConn. My daughter wants to see UConn, but I don’t think it will be a top choice for her. She really wants to be closer to a city.</p>
<p>My daughter goes to Pitt, so we’ve done the NYC to Pittsburgh drive a number of times. I personally would not want to leave Syracuse at 4 p.m. and hoof it out to Pittsburgh. But now that I’ve looked at Google maps, the trip isn’t so bad because you’re farther west than we would be.</p>
<p>If you do make it to Pitt, classes will be in session, because the kids are off this week. (I’m assuming you’re not going this week!)</p>
<p>Here are my three favorite hotels to stay in, ranked from best to “less best”:</p>
<p>I’m going to speak from the more practical side of things …</p>
<p>We are at the point where our daughter has received most of her acceptances (still waiting on a couple that won’t arrive until 4/1).</p>
<p>The most eye-opening part of the whole process is paying for college.</p>
<p>We only went on a couple of college visits leading up to senior year (primarily on travel team tournament trips if one was in the area) - our daughter just wasn’t interested and we know that if she was not a willing participant her annoyance with us might taint her opinion of a school she might actually have liked and would be a good fit.</p>
<p>That being said - I would caution you to make sure you have a good handle on what you are going to be expected to pay, financial aid practices of the school you are visiting, etc.</p>
<p>We had used the FAFSA calculators last year and again at the beginning of senior year and thought the number they gave us would be pretty close to what we would be expected to contribute - we then picked the schools where she would apply accordingly.</p>
<p>In doing the actual FAFSA form in January, it turns out that the calculators were all under-estimating what we would be expected to contribute. The actual report came back $8000 above what we anticipated (and it was already a pretty hefty number). Since we are in a high cost-of-living area, the FAFSA does not take that into consideration and does it’s own magic (i.e. it doesn’t like the low taxes we pay after all our real estate tax deductions, etc.), something the calculators don’t always account for accurately. Our EFC came out to approximately 30% of gross income. I would suggest taking a look at the Financial Aid Board here to get a good feel of what is happening with people’s EFCs and financial aid packages. We now fall into an area where the scholarships our daughter has received at some schools put us where we no longer qualify for financial aid at the school (we didn’t know then that scholarship money at most schools is deducted before the school computes financial aid needed), but it is still too expensive for her to attend there. Our list of ‘schools she can go to that we can actually afford’ is now substantially smaller than when those exciting acceptances with scholarship awards arrived.</p>
<p>I would just say to make sure you don’t kill yourselves getting all of these visits in if you cannot afford to send your child. The trip is expensive, and the trip is mentally and physically challenging. You may be able to cross off some schools based on ‘final cost’ before you go. Or, you may be able to delay visiting until next year when accepted student days and scholarship weekends start happening.</p>
<p>I myself am pretty happy at this point that we did not visit too many colleges until this year - only those to which she was accepted affordably. I don’t know if I could handle the burden of having taken her to a school last year to have her fall in love and then find that we had dangled a carrot we couldn’t give her.</p>
<p>if UConn is so unlikely, why don’t you just skip it? I think Pittsburgh is a great city, and maybe this would give you more time to explore it while you’re there (don’t know if you’ve ever been). Also, would give a little more breathing room into your trip.</p>
<p>By Wednesday afternoon in Syracuse you’re going to be pretty fried; hoping into a car to drive 360 miles after already having driven 650 miles plus 3 tours in 3 days just seems like a recipe for exhaustion or worse. Any place in between Syracuse and Pittsburgh that your daughter is interested in? I think if you could cut Wednesday night’s driving in half, tour someplace Thursday and see Pitt on Friday, you’d be in better shape fatigue wise.</p>
<p>The only other suggestion I have is something that’s worked on college road trips with both of my sons. Come up with an agreed upon set of criteria that you are both going to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 for each school. For us it was Campus Layout/Beauty, Academics, How well did son feel like he’d fit in, Tour Guide Quality, Info Session Quality, How cute the Girls are, food and an overall grade. We would both answer those questions on our ride to the next destination, (I always made them go first so I hopefully wouldn’t influence them with my attitudes). The point is not to give each school some numeric grade but to get the discussion flowing between you and your daughter. e.g. “I see you gave UMass a 7 for academics and a 4 for fit, but you gave UConn a 6 for academics and an 8 for fit, What was it about UConn that you liked so much?”</p>
<p>She may not be able to give you clear explanations about the differences, but after a few visits some trends might start to develop and besides, you’ve got a lot of driving to do. </p>
<p>P.S. Talking about tour guides and the “quality” of the “student body” can lead to some hilarious discussions and leave you with fond memories you’ll laugh about years later.</p>
<p>We are planning a road trip as well. Starting from Boston, we plan to go to Cornell, URochester, Case Western and CMU before heading back home. Currently, only planning on doing one college a day and also driving to the college town the night before. Seems do-able - the only problem being the long 9-10 hour drive back home from CMU.</p>
<p>We’ve done a couple of other trips (2-3 colleges in a trip). We found that you get tired of the info sessions/tours pretty quickly. On one of our other trips, college 1 was ok, college 2 was her favorite and colleges 3 and 4 didn’t even make the cut. We actually just ended up driving around college 4 - car problems caused us to miss the tour/info session. D didn’t even want to get out and look around.</p>
<p>LurkNessMonster,
Thanks for the Pitt hotel recommendations. We may do that visit separately. Have you flown to Pittsburgh? How long does it take to get from the airport to the school? Are there certain times of day when the traffic gets really bad? As Baltimore Ravens fans, we’ve avoided Pittsburgh in the past. I have heard that it’s a very nice city.</p>
<p>As to the suggestion to wait until acceptance to visit colleges, we prefer to visit now. My older daughter chose to apply to her top choice ED, and she wouldn’t have been able to make that decision if she hadn’t already visited her other options. I also agree that summer is not the best time to visit. Some campuses feel really dead in the summer.</p>
<p>Yes, we have flown to Pittsburgh many times. It’s a beautiful, clean, new airport. And there is a city bus that goes from the airport to Pitt and CMU that’s very inexpensive. Pitt and CMU students get on for free. I would say you’d have plan about an hour on the bus because the airport is far west of the city. I don’t know about traffic at certain times of the day, sorry.</p>
<p>If you are flying into Pittsburgh to see Pitt or CMU, you do not need a car. The bus LurkNessMonster mentioned is VERY convenient and cheap, $2.75 for non students. </p>
<p>Just about a year ago, we did a 3000 mile road car trip with my then 11th grade D visiting (in order): Skidmore, Middlebury, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, MIT, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Wellesley, Connecticut College, Wesleyan, Williams, Vassar, Franklin & Marshall. Fourteen colleges. Pfew. Wednesday to Saturday the next week. We always stayed overnight in the town near the day’s first target. Two per day sometimes. Doing two per day can be tough – you must make sure you’re on the rightly scheduled college tour. Check the school’s websites carefully, noting that schedules change during spring break. On those two-school days, I suggest having a sandwich in the car for lunch – no time even for McD’s. Also remember to check your gas tank status frequently (focusing on colleges, one forgets the basics). The info sessions were repetitive after a while (one school says about the same as another), especially since most of the information came again during the tours. Our trip did eliminate some from our D’s list, due to the tours and the kids that gave them. Ask questions about non-basic things to see how they respond (like how are parties – one school’s guide said, “yeah we have them every Friday …” another school’s guide responded “We have the lowest incidence of hospitalization due to over drinking” – not exactly what I was asking). If you go north, plan to check into the hotel/motel before dinner. Turn on the heat, then go out to dinner. Usually the rooms of inexpensive hotel/motels are unheated when there’s no one there, and it takes 1+ hours to get them warm. Make sure the student signs in at the admissions office. Some schools take a visit into the admissions decision as a showing of interest. Also, the kid will get on the mailing list (post and electronic). Dress nicely, but nothing fancy required since you will be one of dozens. If the kid plans to interview, the kid should dress well.</p>
<p>ConcerndDad,
That sounds like quite a trip. We did check the tour schedules and one thing to watch our for in April is Accepted Students Days. Thanks again to everyone for all the helpful suggestions.</p>