Pacific Northwest Roadtrip

<p>scualum I will be interested in your take. We visited Linfield , UP, and Willamette U last spring. Both girls have applied to Portland, One to Willamette and one will be applying to Linfield. It was a very successful trip for us. Do you know where you are staying?</p>

<p>Would it be crazy to try the northwest road trip, leaving from San Francisco? I'm wondering how long it would take to head north, visit some schools in Oregon and Washington and then head south again. Any suggestions?</p>

<p>Not sure of the whole list, but for sure would like to look at Whitman, Lewis and Clark, University of Puget Sound. Maybe Linfield and Evergreen State (plus the other 5 or so mentioned in this thread).</p>

<p>Could some of you give me an idea of how many days your Northwest road trips took, and how many colleges you were able to visit? (We will be going north next summer, if that makes any differnence.) Thanks</p>

<p>In my case, we flew to Seattle, rented a car, and took one day each for: UPS, Willamette, L&C, and Whitman.</p>

<p>Karen: The trip to Salem is about 8.5 hours from my home which is about 2 hours north of the GG Bridge. My advice would be to head north from the east bay on 880 then link up with 5 and avoid San Francisco all together if you can. The trip is actually quite easy driving wise as 5 takes you all the way up. It is also lovely once you get out of the valley at Yreka. </p>

<p>our route went from Salem to McMinnville to Portland to Forest Grove and home and we spent 6 full days in Oregon. We wanted to be leisurely about it.</p>

<p>To me it would depend on your tolerance for driving and how much time you have. Having made the drive from Monterey to Seattle twice while helping family move, I would avoid that alternative :) 7 hours to Oregon border, 5 more to Washington border, 4 more to Seattle. </p>

<p>Flights + rental cars, especially when booked well in advance, can be cheaper than driving - at least the math worked out that way for us.</p>

<p>My son and I did a tour of schools in the NW over spring break a few years ago. We flew into and out of Portland and visited UO, Willamette, Lewis & Clark, Reed, UPS, and Seattle U over a 6-day period. We basically spent one full day in each city -- Eugene, Salem, Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle -- and visited one school per day, except in Portland. (Reed and L&C are truly just 10 minutes apart, so they can easily be visited on the same day.) </p>

<p>That itinerary made the trip pretty relaxed since it broke up the driving task (never had to drive more than 3 hours in a single day) and also maximized the amount of time we could spend at each school. It also allowed us some time to explore the surrounding areas to get a feel for off-campus life. I think the trip would have been much more stressful if we had tried to fit in more schools or expanded our route to include other cities.</p>

<p>I have not visited Whitman since its size and location did not appeal to my D, but it has an excellent reputation and merits a visit. Unfortunately, while the other colleges you're considering are all pretty easily accessed from I-5, Whitman is across the mountains and way the heck on the other side of Washington state. It's about a 4.5 hour drive from Seattle or 4 hours from Portland. You could drive straight up I-5 to Seattle with side trips to all the other schools on your list, then head over to Whitman and spend the night (or not) and from there head southwest to Portland so you wouldn't be retracing your steps. If you're looking for an academically challenging LAC and its rather remote location is not a deal-breaker, I would consider it important to include Whitman on your list. Be sure to take a look at U of Oregon's Clark Honors College if a larger college is a possibility. The campus is lovely and my experience as a parent has been that the atmosphere is very nurturing and personal.</p>

<p>A drive from the Bay area to the Canadian border takes 15-17 hours, depending on whether you hit traffic. That is with no stops and no side trips, so figure 30 hours of north-south driving RT. Then add to it your other adventures to decide if it is worth it. The cost of gas and wear and tear is not cheap, but neither are rental cars</p>

<p>It will probably be quicker to head to Walla Walla from Portland, after seeing L&C, than to go there from Seattle. OTOH, it's a slightly prettier drive from Seattle.</p>

<p>That is exactly what we did. Wouldn't want to argue about which drive was prettier; it's an advantage to do both!</p>

<p>Bumping this thread so NYmomx2 can find it. Lots of good info. here.</p>

<p>Thanks, Karen Colleges!</p>

<p>In August I went with two friends and one of their Dad's up the coast from Los Angeles. We left LA late, around 7:30, and hit Kelso, Washington (about 30min north of Portland) at around 2:00 and spent the night there. We had hit Medford around 6 or 7ish and had dinner at an amazing little Japanese place right off the I-5 and even had time to explore the town a bit.</p>

<p>We spent a day in Seattle, seeing Seattle U in the morning, leaving the car there because of the free parking, and biking to University of Washington. From their we biked down to the Space Needle, saw the sites around town (including Safeco and Seahawks Stadium) and than did the brutal bike ride up the hill back up Pill Hill to get the car. Spent the night in Kelso and did Portland the next day. We visited University of Portland, then drove to Lewis & Clark and after left the car in downtown and biked the city and saw the sights.</p>

<p>Both Portland and Seattle were absolutely AMAZING, and all four schools we visited in the area were really neat and unique in their own way. We drove down to the coast to see if there was any camping, but the intense fog and lateness was too much so we drove back to Corvallis. The next day we hit up Oregon State in Corvallis and as soon as that ended we sped down to Eugene to see the University of Oregon. From there we went to Coos Bay and set up camp there. From there it was mostly a camping trip although we did drive through San Francisco and walked around San Francisco State and the University of San Francisco. We also drove through UC Santa Cruz before heading home. We were originally going to see UC Davis and Sacramento State, but driving through their going north was so depressing that we all decided it wasn't for us.</p>

<p>fangsup15-sounds like and amazing trip--so--please give your impressions of the very different schools that you saw...</p>

<p>So first the Catholic Schools...</p>

<p>Coming from a pretty liberal Catholic High School (although only being "culturally" catholic myself), I was open to these schools despite not wanting to enter a strict and/or conservative environment although I was not expecting to like any of them. Seattle University completely blew away my expectations and I wound up loving the school. The campus was a bit small, but absolutely gorgeous and the area was great and everyone was friendly and welcoming. The dorms were way nice and the coed by room was very attractive. It was definitely a place I could see myself for four years. University of Portland had an amazing campus and again, everyone was very friendly. It was in a quaint residential part of town and the campus itself was large and almost it's own little town on the bluff it sits on. Off the bat, however, I could tell it was a lot more conservative than Seattle U. Sitting in the admissions office and looking through yearbooks, the school seemed a whole lot high-school-y. There was everything you'd expect in a high school yearbook, including pictures from dances (Homecoming, Prom, etc.) and other such events. Our tour guide was very nice, but she dressed kind of like a second grade teacher. She reminded me of the teacher from Matilda a whole lot, actually. The dorm situation was a whole lot stricter but the academic programs (especially in education and engineering) were top notch and seemed incredibly engaging.</p>

<p>There isn't much to say about University of San Francisco, we didn't get to see much of the actual campus but it had a dramatic location atop a hill near the Golden Gate Bridge and the Presidio in a very nice (and very expensive) neighborhood.</p>

<p>Ack I realize I have a ton of homework to get too... i'll finish this tomorrow. If you'd like any specific questions about the Catholic schools i'll be glad to try and answer them.</p>

<p>Son of Opie, can I ask what other schools you applied to and how you ended up at Linfield?</p>

<p>Same question to any other alumni or current students of the schools discussed in this thread.<br>
(I know California schools, but am just starting to learn about the Pacific Northwest Schools.</p>

<p>Well we are back from our trip - stops at the University of Portland, Lewis & Clark, Willamette, Linfield and George Fox. I've posted the visit reports on Lewis & Clark and Willamette but the other three don't seem to have places for visit reports so I will write them up separately and post them to this thread as I have time to get them done. </p>

<p>Overall the trip was major success. Weather could not have been nicer, all of the advanced planning worked out and we made every appointment on time. A few things we learned about this type of trip:</p>

<p>1) Don't try to do too many in one day. Two in one day (U of P, L & C) were more than enough information and as a result we did not make it over to Reed. Ideally, I would say do one college a day and spend the extra time exploring the surrounding area (as we did the following two days).</p>

<p>2) Whenever possible, guided tour should occur before the information session. Guided tours give you a strong student life view - and the information session can fill in the gaps. The other way around did not work the two times we had it in that order.</p>

<p>3) Take a camera and take lots of pictures wandering around the campus after the tour. We already find ourselves using those pictures to sort out the details between the colleges.</p>

<p>4) Ask for a college bulletin. They don't always have them as part of the standard packet of handouts - but they sure do have a ton of info in them</p>

<p>5) Take the time to write up the schools after each visit. Otherwise you forget. We failed to do this and I sure regret it.</p>

<p>More on the actual schools in my next post.</p>

<p>So as for the schools themselves. Our goal for this trip was to allow my HS Junior daughter to get a better feel for what kind of school she wanted to go to. She was thinking small school, basically a LAC. </p>

<p>Linfield and Willamette came out of this trip as the ones she liked the best. Common characteristics: </p>

<p>1) Friendly student body, lots of interaction all around us as we walked through campus
2) Small town feel - The area around both schools is very classic small town America - similar to where we live now.
3) Quad style design to the campus
4) Newer or recently renovated dorms. Linfield in particular had great dorms as you moved up in class standing.</p>

<p>University of Portland suffer by having a little too much of the bigger university feel - as well as the port of Portland being right below along the river giving the surroundings an industrial feel. </p>

<p>George Fox was a simple walkthrough - we did not have time for a proper visit - but the campus seemed somewhat run down and the students universally alone. </p>

<p>Lewis & Clark was definitely third on the tour. Not for any particular reason - just a lack of a feeling of "I can fit in here". </p>

<p>I'll explore each of the visits in more detail in post for each college. </p>

<p>I would like to thank all of the other posters and PMers for all of their help in planning a very successful trip. Definitely a great start for us in the college search.</p>

<p>scualum, if your kid has high stats, Linfield will be very generous with merit money. Beautiful and nurturing school. We had the same super-friendly vibe you felt.<br>
I don't know if it matters to your kid but for a DIII school they have lots of sports available - even a good football team, which is really rare in the group of schools you are looking at. I'm not a big football fan, but there's something about a crisp October afternoon and yellow leaves on the trees....</p>

<p>Oregon101- I was from 5 hours away; if I wanted to go home for the weekend, I really had to mean it. Therefore it was mostly reserved for breaks. I did notice that there were fewer people on campus on the weekends earlier on in the school year. As time went on, and people made friends at school, they were less likely to head home. Happens when a lot of the student body lives within an hour of the school. I would say "many" is actually a fairly small fraction of the student body. </p>

<p>And the school is close enough to a lot of stuff that people will head out for the weekend to catch concerts in Portland or Salem or go camping at the beaches. It's certainly possible that people are away for the weekend without going home. I didn't have problems finding stuff to do on campus on weekends. Then again, I was involved in the Greek system, the choir, and a sport.</p>

<p>I'm going back tomorrow for homecoming, so I'll see what's changed in the two years since the new president took over.</p>