Sun Country is $85 each way from Mpls to LA. I don’t know where you live or where you’re going, but there are flights on the routes we travel across the country (3000 miles) under $200. Google Flights is an amazing resource.
and @CollegeYaYa. Google Flights has the same prices as all the other sites, like Kayak & Expedia. I was hoping it would be some hidden secret, but nah. Oh well.
Unless I’m driving the 24 Hours of Le Mans, there’s no chance I’m driving that long to anywhere except off the nearest cliff. 
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Thank you all for being a light and levity over these past few months. We are not going to make a decision here until 11:59pm (and if she takes UMich off the list, CMU and Case Western don’t need decisions til May 3 so we can put it off a little longer). At least she has pared it down from 7 to 3! Add in waitlist spots and this has been a crazy ride.
It has been good to share with DH that D1 is not the only indecisive kid out there. She just keeps plugging away at her homework and telling us her courseload is too much make decisions right now. I just have to convince her all her choices are good ones and that she can be happy anywhere!
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We’re in Los Angeles and visited Chapman pre-covid. Out of the 10 schools we visited within driving distance of LA, Chapman had the best food! So that’s a big plus (at least for my son it was)! 
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Well unless my S comes up with a big surprise tonight it looks like he will commit to Colgate as all his remaining offers expire at 11:59 pm! We will be with @homerdog so that’s pretty fun and unexpected. Go ‘Gate!
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And we have a decision!!! D21 committed to Cal Poly SLO for biomedical engineering after much agonizing. The final decision was between University of Rochester (no aid), University of Michigan LSA for neuroscience and Cal Poly. I thought there would be more drama and tears today because she was sure not in a good place last night, but she’s happy and at peace. There are still a few waitlists but she’s not invested in either of them.
Thanks everyone on this board for all the helpful information and good luck to everyone taking it down to the wire tonight!
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Woohoo, ds has made his college choice. He will be attending St. Olaf this fall to pursue a double degree in Vocal Performance and Mathematics 
This is beyond exciting. I have homeschooled him from the beginning and this is the culmination of a long and amazing journey filled with some pretty fabulous homeschool experiences, a great community, deep learning, long-standing friendships and so much creativity. I can’t quite believe we’ve arrived at this moment. Ds has been a joy and delight to teach and I feel blessed to have been in a position to be so present for and with him as he has traveled through each grade. I am super excited for his new professors to have him as their student.
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Hmmm, with those three choices, I would have went with Rochester. 
(Hold your angry responses, D18 attends Michigan, D21 will be attending Cal Poly)
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Oh yeah! See you in Hamilton!! Woo hoo!!
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She just pulled the trigger, a panther she’ll be. Go Chapman … now I’m hoping it’s the right decision 
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Rochester is a great school but their reputation for good merit aid did not hold true this year, at least not for us. Neither parents nor D21 felt it was worth the 80-100K extra compared to the other schools. D21 felt the campus was too quiet for her as well, though that might have been an unfortunate result of Covid.
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My son is chatting online with his friend who can not decide between UC Santa Barbara and Emerson. Poor kid. Cutting it close.
@jntwinmama Goodness. His poor parents! I think it was 11pm PST when you posted this!
It was a her… with very strict Chinese parents. I assume I will find out tomorrow what happened.
You don’t want her driving in LA anyways… 
Airfares are back to pre pandemic days for the most part! If you want to fly something like spirit it is cheap, but then you pay a fortune for everything else on that and you can’t pay me to fly that airline.
If you fly on an off day that is sometimes the cheapest but also looing for fares on a tuesday or wednesday sometimes are the best. I’m trying to buy my daughter her flight to JFK for June 1 to Israel and that has doubled in recent weeks. Fortunately we have the irsael leg of it but crazy.
As for rental cars, I always book through costco and booked my car in austin for this week but prices sometimes go down as it gets closer so I decided to look, since I was paying 180 for the 2 days and low and behold there are NO cars available at all. So I guess I will be paying that $180 plus valet at 39/night at the hotel. Still trying to convince my daughter to skip my renting a car and just taking an uber all over since we are both vaccinated and mas wearers.
@burghdad haha as for not wanting to drive in LA I agree…I hate it…but it must be pretty chill these days, because my daughter is there this weekend visiting/staying with my brother and her cousin and has been freaking all week about driving his car and having to parallel park…lmao. I would’ve loved to see that. Nevermind that she hates driving here and all my kids share is a civic. They won’t drive my husband’s car. I used to have a Pilot they didn’t even drive. But my brother has a luxury car but LA must’ve mellowed him if he let her drive it without a freak and and they went to Malibu and no problem finding parking etc so she survived. But traffic, just like here if one travels to downtown Chicago is next to nothing these days. So all good. She got to visit and eat some fantastic food - even though it was not out at restaurants since they’re still not all vaccinated in the house so don’t go out. But if it were me, I would take a pass on driving ever in LA.
@UpNorth2019 @burghdad Re 529 no penalty withdrawal for merit scholarships. Yes, that’s correct (though you have to pay taxes on the gains). But keep in mind the withdrawal must occur in the same year as the merit was given. So you may not be able to totally wait to see what happens with grad school to make the decision. We will likely do half the withdrawal fall of senior year and, if he doesn’t decide on or get into grad school in spring, we will withdraw the remaining. I’d rather pay taxes on those gains for a sure thing than a penalty later.
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Paying taxes on the gains may negate a lot of the benefit of taking it out in exchange for the merit scholarships. I wouldn’t do that. I would leave it there indefinitely (until you know grad school is off the table), use it for qualified expenses, or transfer to someone else so you don’t pay anything. Paying 10% on the gains is still technically a “penalty”.
When you consider the likelihood that your 529’s may have increased by as much as 50% in the last year, or substantially if not that much and will continue to increase over the course of her education, the amount you will pay on the gains is also substantial. Why should you pay any of that? Also, there will still be plenty of costs that are not covered under the scholarship. Are all books covered? Computer? Room and Board up to the COA in all 4 years? Summer school? Etc. Look at the IRS guidelines.
But if one started a 529 with 20k and it’s worth 200k by the time a kid graduates then unless i’m misunderstanding the amount of penalty (10% paid on gains) that has to be paid…that means that 10% of 180000 is 18k. For one of my kids that’s more than one year of her tuition. For my others that’s room and board for a year if living in a dorm. I wouldn’t just give it to the IRS. Even now I have a substantial amount still set aside in my older child’s name that I already know I will be using for my daughter with the most expensive tuition and then paying my son back separately in cash.
Where is that requirement for 529 merit withdrawals? @BelknapPoint has stated the opposite in the past and there’s nothing in the tax forms to indicate that is the case