@itsgettingreal17 not looking at winter break yet. I’ll need to do that early but figure I have some time. Our experience with SD14 is that what day her finals are on can vary quite a bit so the day she is free to come home is variable and may or may not line up well with published end dates by several days (or a final at 7pm on the last friday kind of thing).
Had a nice visit at RPI yesterday, which actually surprised me a little bit. D has been so ambivalent about this whole college thing, it was nice to finally see some signs of life from her, lol.
We weren’t able to make it to their official accepted student shindig this past Saturday, so we just jumped on one of their regular presentation/tour days. In a stroke of luck though, our tour guide was a girl who was finishing up a math/econ double major and picking up a 5th year MBA. We stayed behind after the tour and talked to her (she is even from Long Island) and hearing her experience and enthusiasm allowed D to actually envision herself there. We got very lucky with the weather too, so plenty of students were out and about and campus looked lively.
It’s funny, I have been thinking of Stony Brook as D’s “anxiety option” all this time, because it’s physically the closest school (within @2 hours of home, vs 5-6 hours for the others) where she could come home any weekend, but the thing I didn’t really take into account was how big Stony Brook is. When we were at SB on Sunday for their admitted student day, it was clear that even with the smaller Women in Science & Engineering group to call home within the larger university, D felt completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there. So even though the programs themselves seemed pretty great, and it’s clear that a student who already has a lot of momentum can do just about anything she wants from SB, I could see D withdrawing more and more as the day went on. She’s just not there yet, in terms of her level of independence. RPI felt like a much more manageable size to D.
Remaining visits are Hamilton on Monday and Smith on Thursday, then she’s going to have to decide. I will be very happy when this is all over, but it was nice to feel like at least some progress has been made!
I thought airlines fares expensive if you buy way ahead, may be different for college/school opening and closing periods.
As soon as we know where he will be, we will buy round trip tickets for Thanksgiving, and maybe Winter break.
@SincererLove Here’s someone else dealing with the Vandy vs MIT choice.
Ok, one important consideration… D said she is at most below average at Vandy compared to some classic blonde, blue eyes girls there, while she is average at MIT, where she might be finding her soulmate @nw2this “Most of the people there are not that attractive” 
She may have to depend on her wit and personality alone if she goes to Vandy…this is the girl when forced to watch BBC’s Pride and Prejudice called Mr. Darcy a stalker…“go talk to her already”
Joking aside…Still deciding!
We used points for a one way. There’s no advantage to getting a round trip on points, and we won’t know her last December final date until registration.
Is it better to buy one way for initial trip and then buy round trip tickets for Thanksgiving and winter breaks?
You’d have to play with it. You could buy a round trip to depart in fall and come home for Thanksgiving, then a second round trip for Thanksgiving/December.
Usually, I do. I buy tickets as soon as Southwest opens up the dates. Thanksgiving and Winterbreak tickets would be very costly if not bought asap.
I like SWA since there is no change fee and if fares go down, I change the ticket for the same schedule for the lower fare. Although I have been a loyal united custormer (although recently I frequented SWA) I am not going to fly United anymore. There goes my lifetime mileage accumulation.
@srk2017 You need to watch the fares or use on-line tools for that. It varies but if you watch for a few weeks, you can grab a sale or drop in fares 6 months ahead.
OW or RT or open jaw:
That is an interesting question. It depends. Ages ago it used to be cheaper to buy RT tickests. Not anymore. Sometimes I buy SWA for inbound and JetBlue for outbound or inbound from say Hartford and then outbound to Boston, for example. Perhaps DS can do all these optimization!
I use trip organizer app, right now TripCase. I put all my and kids’ trips there. Otherwise I keep forgetting which trips are already purchased and what remains to be booked.
We don’t have to worry about flights for son17, NEU sets up those for the kids going overseas.
When he’s home he’s less than 25 miles from home, so easy to pick him up. He might even be able to take the commuter rail out to our town, we live a couple of mies from the stop. So pretty easy.
@SincererLove that’s funny your daughter is “rating” her chances, lol. Good luck with the decision! Have you talked to her about the sheer # of young men in the area of MIT?
Anyone else NOT planning to have kid fly home for Thanksgiving? It’s only a few days break, we have miserable wet weather at home in November, its a crazy hectic time to travel, and it’s only a few weeks until a longer break. Doesn’t seem worth the inflated airfare to me.
Stress and MIT
Is it the school or is it the type of student?
STEM students, high achievers and students who try to do everything could be stressed anywhere.
A student body full of students who are all three is bound to have an above average amount of stress.
MIT offers lots of support and they make it impossible to fail freshman year.
Probably not the place for someone who can’t stand the idea of being average even in an above average population.
Lol! We noticed that too. MIT students were not too concerned with style and fashion from clothing to dorm room decor. D will fit right in. But beware the boys tend to date girls from Wellesley, BU, and other schools.
@RightCoaster It is difficult to part with the 27K/year Honors offer from NEU and a chance to live in Boston. =((
Chanting, it is not my life, not my college. :))
@Mommertons We are not planning to fly S17 home for Thanksgiving break - too short of a break for the hours in airport and on planes. We will work to connect him with friends/family in Colorado for the holiday - or hope he connects with someone local at school.
@Mommertons If DS goes to CMU, he probably won’t come home for Thanksgiving for all the reasons you cited. 3 days off. DH racks up a lot of frequent flyer miles, but Thanksgiving is probably the hardest time to get FF reservations.
If he goes to Caltech, it’s a 2 hour drive or there is a fairly convenient Amtrak train, so we will hope to see him and his end of quarter problem sets. Only 2 days off.
Scotland does not celebrate Thanksgiving 
@srk2017 it really really depends on the market and the dates that you are talking about for flights. There is typically a sweet spot for decent prices. It can be 10 months out, 6 months out or even 2-3 depending on where it is. Once you have a feel for what the pricing range is, you’ll know what is a deal and what isn’t lol.
Summer and holiday flights are often much better 10-7 months out in my experience and absolutely brutal 6-1 month.
I track all flights using yapta to know when to buy as soon as I know I am thinking about something. I also try very hard to buy where I’ll get a credit if the price drops, and track that price as well with alerts if it does drop. I rarely get credits but almost always save by buying when the price is right.
RT doesn’t save a penny and makes it much harder to get any qualified refunds or to make changes, we book 100% one way tickets.
Very possible I’ll buy the return ticket after winter break before I buy the outbound since that will be a more “hard” date but if nothing else, I’ll start tracking them all soon.
YMMV
@Mommertons we will not be flying S17 home for Thanksgiving. It’s a full 2 days of travel, crazy pricing and he’ll be home a couple of weeks later. SD14 hasn’t been home for thanksgiving once. On the flip side, we’ve often hosted other kids that aren’t going home that are friends with my niece. I’m not worried that he will have somewhere to go but do have some backups for him if not.
Thanksgiving break: I already know the answer without even checking, but the question got me to play with what it would look like, so…Muhlenberg doesn’t hold classes the day before Thanksgiving, so she could fly here that day (let’s see…she’d leave around 7:00a to get home late that afternoon, and that might have to recover from a four-hour time difference to groggily eat with us on Thursday. We’d have Friday with her, and then to arrive back in time for classes on Monday she’d have to leave late on Saturday to arrive late Sunday evening (going against the travel direction of the sun can be brutal, really), and then somehow recover from any adjustments she’d made to the time zone difference to be coherent in her classes on Monday.
Yeah, I’m thinking we’ll just drop her off in August and plan to see her again in December.