<p>It will be by means of driving during Spring break (late March) and the total budget is less than $1000, prefer less than $800.</p>
<p>Day 1, drive to Pittsburgh and spend ½ day at CMU. Find a hotel between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia;<br>
Day 2, ½ day at UPenn, ½ day at Swarthmore College; find a hotel between Philadelphia and Trenton;
Day 3, ½ day at Princeton, heads home or next school.</p>
<p>Seeking suggestions on: town to stay for Day 1 and Day 2; if any other school we should include in this trip; any place on this route that we should spend a day R & R;</p>
<p>Not sure what schools your kid is looking for. Princeton is an hour from NYC, you could visit NYU and Columbia. Lehigh, Bucknell, Colgate, Cornell are in the general direction on the way back. There are a lot of inexpensive hotels outside of Princeton (Windsor, South Brunswick, Lawrenceville, Somerville) for around 100/night.</p>
<p>You could visit U Pitt while in Pittsburgh. It’s across the street from CMU, and could be a good safety (they are relatively easy/predictable with admissions, and give up to full ride scholarships to top students). Good school, nice campus, cross registration with CMU.</p>
<p>There are a gazillion motels around the I81 interchange in Carlilse, just west of Harrisburg. This would also give a chance to do a quick drive-by of Dickinson College in Carlilse. It would be a potential candidate for a drop-dead safety with full ride merit deal for students looking at the schools you mention.</p>
<p>A couple of logistical notes. Swarthmore and UPenn are both on the same train line with stations right on both campuses, about 20 minutes apart. It might make sense to leave the car at Swarthmore, take the train to UPenn, and back to Swarthmore. The drive up to Princeton is actually easier from Swarthmore than it is from downtown Philly.</p>
<p>From Swat, you take I476 north and skirt the western and northern suburbs of Philly. It’s an hour and twenty minutes door to door according to Google. This route puts you right by Haverford, which also might be a consideration to add to the intinerary.</p>
<p>On the way home from Princetown, you could swing through Allentown and do drive-bys of Lehigh University and Lafayatte College. Safeties and matches are harder to put on a college list than reaches, so don’t overlook opportunities to look at some schools that are sure bets.</p>
<p>As far as R&R, we found these college trips to be gruelling. About all we wanted at night was dinner, a shower, and bed. So, I won’t offer a lot of extras. Philly has some outstanding restaurants downtown and in the western suburbs.</p>
<p>I think the second day of your trip looks like you are biting off a lot. The drive to Philly, plus two schools where you will probably want to do info sessions and tours. I’m not sure that you wouldn’t rather do one school that day (maybe Penn), get a hotel room in Swarthmore and do Swarthmore the next morning, swing by Haverford on the way up to Princeton. Spend the night in Princeton and do the tour thing the next morning. This would put in you Swarthmore and Princeton at night, so you could perhaps find some activity on campus. Just an option. Stretching out day 2 would give you the chance to do a tour at Dickinson (a small investment of “demonstrated interest” time for a true full-ride safety with non-binding early notification).</p>
<p>I think that at the end of Day 1 you should get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and drive almost to Philadelphia, so you have as long of a day as possible on Day 2. It is already an ambitious day without a long drive.</p>
<p>Hotels.com has a hampton inn in King of Prussia just off the turnpike for $84. orbitz.com has a holiday inn express in King of Prussia for $88. Would one of those work for you for Night 1?</p>
<p>^ I agree about King of Prussia. It’s about a 4-1/2 hour drive from Pittsburgh making for a longish Day I, but there are lots of reasonable hotel choices and it would put you within easy striking distance of all the Philly-area schools on Day 2. If you do stay in/near King of Prussia it would be easy to do at least a drive-by (if not a full tour) at Haverford and (if your prospective student is female) Bryn Mawr: both lovely campuses, both schools with outstanding academics, and both tied in with Penn and Swarthmore as members of the “Quaker Consortium.” For that matter, since it’s only about an hour drive from King of Prussia to Princeton you could spent Nights 1 AND 2 there and save yourself the hassle of finding/settling into a different motel on Night 2. D and I comfortably visited Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Swat, and Penn over a day-and-a-half span this summer. With careful planning you might be able to squeeze in tours of all these schools plus Princeton in 2 days.</p>
<p>I also agree with interesteddad about getting off the Turnpike in Carlisle and taking a quick look at Dickinson, at least as a drive-by. It’s important not to overlook those safeties.</p>
<p>The main benefit of a college hunting trip to Philly as you have outlined is that you get to kick the tires at three top exemplars of three distinct types of schools. Swarthmore is an example of the best there is in liberal arts colleges. UPenn is a great example of a large urban university. And, it doesn’t get better than Princeton when it comes to mid-size suburban private universities. Thus, in addition to scoping out these three specific schools, you really want to hang out at each one enough to get a real sense of the pros and cons of each TYPE and SIZE of school. So, I would focus the itinerary around giving yourself the time to do the tours, the info sessions, have breakfast or lunch in the dining hall, go to an event, and just generally take in ambience at these schools. Ideally, one per day, rounding out each day around that block of time with driving and drive by visits to colleges along the way. It is difficult to do the full tour/info/ambience thing at two colleges in one day. Easy to do that, plus a drive by.</p>
<p>BTW, the suggestion to plop yourself down in King of Prussia for several days is not bad at all. That would let you feel a little more settled while seeing as many as five or six colleges in the area.</p>
<p>Agreed…travel the night before each place so you are THERE in the morning…or close. A long drive followed by an ambitious college visit day is not pleasant.</p>
<p>Yes, yes, yes to getting to the Phila area the night before. We just did an overnight trip to see Haverford and Swat. DH made reservations for $89 in King of Prussia before we wound up staying w/friends in West Chester. It was an hour drive in traffic from Wast Chester to arrive at Haverford by 8:30 am. It is another 20-25 minutes from Haverford to Swat. </p>
<p>It is a tight fit getting from Haverford to Swat in tme for the afternoon info sessions, but we did it and so did several other families we saw at Haverford that moring. If you’re coming from Pgh, I’d stay in KOP – there is a huge mall and lots of restaurants right there.</p>
<p>Not sure I would take the R3 out to Swat – the trains aren’t that frequent going cross-rush from Penn (at least they didn’t used to be – check a SEPTA R3 train schedule) and hotels/parking around Penn can be pricey. If S2 goes back to visit again, though, I would stick him on Amtrak from here and let him take the R3 to Swat, since that is how he would generally get home and I think being comfortable with the distances and travel is an important consideration.</p>
<p>If your S wants to sit in on classes (and if you’re coming all this way and may not get a chance to return, I strongly recommend doing this) and have your son do the tour and info session, you will want an early start in the AM. If you stay in King of Prussia the second night, you will hit lots of traffic on the way to Princeton.</p>
<p>Also agree with stopping by Pitt while visiting CMU. We know some fine students who took ther merit $$ there and are quite happy. One is applying to Yale for grad school and has had terrific opportunities.</p>
<p>DH did seven schools in five days and 2200 miles of driving with S1 over Spring Break of junior year. Bless his heart, he is doing it again this April with S2. They found that two schools a day was the limit for getting good info, having a chance to visit classes/walk around, and still be able to process info (and for DH to be coherent enough to drive to the next destination!).</p>
<p>The problem with that strategy is it’s hard to tell whether what you like or dislike is something about the TYPE of school, or something about the particular school. My D has developed a strong affinity for small, strongly academic LACs. She absolutely fell in love with Haverford and Bryn Mawr, but something about Swarthmore left her cold—I’m still not sure what, though it might have been something as simple as not hitting it off with the student tour guide who, to a greater degree than is desirable, comes to be seen as a stand-in for the entire student body. But if we had just seen Swat and taken it as representative of a type, the other two schools might not be on her current target list at all, much less at the very top where they now sit. (Sorry, idad, I know you love Swarthmore and I was very impressed myself, but it just doesn’t make D’s list).</p>
<p>That said, I agree with interesteddad that you don’t want to rush it. But if you’re going to be in/around Philly and are looking at schools of this caliber, Haverford definitely shouldn’t be overlooked; nor should BMC if the student is female. (For that matter, even males considering Haverford should take a peek at BMC because the two really work in tandem with numerous cross-registrations, joint programs, joint ECs, etc, almost like two halves of a single campus just a mile or so apart).</p>
<p>Doesn’t bother me. My daugther couldn’t stand Haverford when she visited. Had no plans to apply there (which I thought was a mistake, but you can’t drag them when they dig their heels in).</p>
<p>Actually, your experience speaks to my point of spending some time around campus above and beyond the tours. Eat in the dining hall. Go to a lecture. Hang out in a student lounge.</p>
<p>bclintock - My son was exactly the opposite. He was initially drawn to Haverford and I insisted that we visit Swarthmore while we were in the area. He ended up falling in love with Swat and not even applying to Haverford. </p>
<p>I think that a lot depends on what you want to accomplish on the trip. Visiting 2 schools in one day gives you a snapshot, but not much indepth. However, we found that that helped son to narrow down what schools he was really interested in. He then went back for longer visits to a few schools during his senior year.</p>
<p>I’m all for two a days, but our experience was that it is really only possible to do one in-depth and one shorter visit per day. I mean, there are only so many lunches or breakfasts or coffee breaks you can take in a school dining hall, but those opportunities sit and observe or strike up casual conversation my end up being the most valuable.</p>
<p>You will find it much easier to plan the college visits and set up tours etc if you get to the site the night before. You’ll also be more rested. If you know specifically which colleges I would start by checking the available tour/information sessions times. I don’t know if CMU does things differently during the spring vs the summer but they DO NOT include a dorm visit on their general tour so make sure that you find out when that will occur if it is important to you. Also, if you’re going to interview, you might add that to the visit at the campus instead of having to do an alumni interview etc. We also found it very helpful to visit with the specific department. This in particular made writing those why I want to go to X school essays much easier.</p>
<p>For making visits cheaper, strongly advise using priceline or hotwire for hotels if you can deal with the unknown. You can get great bargains if you stay in the larger cities (middle of nowhere isn’t usually very successful).</p>
<p>DadII, we’ll be making a similar trip during D’s spring break (hopefully). Our plan is to visit Princeton, Swat, Haverford (maybe), UPenn (maybe), Villanova, Lehigh and Lafayette. We won’t be going to Pittsburgh, however. At the moment, D’s not interested in seeing either Haverford or UPenn, but she may change her mind.</p>
<p>cnp55 - where is Penn State in relation to these schools? It’s not on D’s list, but her counselor included it as a very safe school.</p>
<p>This is Dad II. Pitt is not going to make his list. Skip it. Same with Haverford.<br>
I am from the Philadelphia area. Driving around there is like sticking knives in your eyes. Be prepared for that- and that INCLUDES the Main Line where Haverford is (out to K of Prussia) AND the Swat area. I was just there- it continues to be a nightmare.</p>
<p>Fair enough. We were limited in what we could see because we visited during the summer. Dining halls closed, no lectures, no one in the student lounges. Basically just the tour, info session (and these all sound pretty much alike after a while), walking around campus on our own & exploring the surrounding area. I realize this is very different from seeing the school in full swing but given my work schedule, D’s school and EC schedule, and the fact that we live a good 1,000 mils from Philadelphia meant this was the best we could do as a first pass. Unfortunately there’s a certain amount of triage that goes on at that stage. She’ll do re-visits, including overnights, at some of her top colleges during senior year, but at this rate I don’t see Swarthmore being on her list.</p>
<p>LIMOMOF2,
Penn State is not all that close to the Philadelphia-area schools. It’s a good 3-1/2 to 4 hour drive away, in north central Pennsylvania. If you’re coming from the NYC area you could visit the Philly-area schools, drive up to Penn State in half a day, and shoot straight east across Interstate 80 back to NYC, about 4 hours. On the other hand, from NYC it would be almost as easy to visit Penn State in a separate trip, 4 hours there, a half-day visit, 4 hours back.</p>
<p>Dad II…you may not be able to eat in the dining halls, etc. as some of these schools could well be on THEIR spring break when you are there. I don’t know whether you feel it’s important for your son to see schools when they are in session…or not. Also some schools do have reduced hours for tours and such during school breaks…you should just check to make sure.</p>
<p>Does UPitt have a good economics department? That is what Dad II is looking for with his son. He’s applying to his state flagship U…maybe Pitt would be a possibility (finaid possibilities are very good there for top students).</p>
<p>Dad II - I hope Son-of-Dad II is a good traveler. That four-and-a-half hour trip from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia means 70 MPH the whole way with no stops! (Watch out for deer.)</p>