Be sure to spend a day at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg. We still love going there with our older kids. Beautiful park with some super fun rollercoasters. Hit William & Mary the next day.
My DD and I flew in and out of BWI. We live in AZ so we flew on Southwest. We did 2 schools / day and saw: W&L and UVA, Wake Forest and Duke, William and Mary and U of Richmond, Georgetown and GW, drive through only of Swarthmore, Villanova and tour of UPenn. We didn’t stop at historic sites and did this in 6 days including travel. It can be done with some planning. Enjoy the trip!
When we visited the Gettysburg battlefield in the summer, we arrived in the late afternoon and saw the inside exhibits. We went to the actual battlefield very, very early the next morning. The battlefield was empty and silent in the morning mist. It was incredibly moving.
If you are going to Gettysburg a couple of fun diversions that aren’t too far away would be Hershey Park. It’s a traditional amusement park with steel coasters and it also has a water park that is all included in admission. I like it better than the various Six Flags parks because it is so much less crowded even at peak times. Yes the popular coasters can be a wait but in general much shorter wait times. Take your suits and get a locker early then do rides early and late and go to the water park in the heat of the day.
If you don’t mind taking more of a detour then I’d highly recommend: http://www.knoebels.com/ Knoebels Amusement Park. Great little amusement park. It’s very shady so stays cooler in the summer. There 's no cost for admission so if someone in the party doesn’t ride it doesn’t matter. You can either go unlimited rides or buy tickets and ride what you want. You can bring coolers and picnic or get food there which is better than most amusement park food.
Your Philadelphia Airport tour could efficiently include Penn and Villanova followed by Lafayette and Lehigh. Then Bucknell, Dickinson and F&M before returning to airport. Lastly stay at Swarthmore’s new lodge … refresh. The drive to the airport is only 15 minutes from Swarthmore.
Visited the Inn at Swarthmore. Very nice. The train station is adjacent to the Inn. Take the train to UPenn. Villanova and Haverford are a 15 minute drive. Airport is a 10 minute drive.
Please later give us an update, after you refine your list of colleges, so people can provide more specific advice.
I-95 can be stressful, slow and very expensive for tolls. When travelling from Pa to UVa, I always take I-81 to I-64. There are no tolls and it is a low-stress drive most of the time.
If you take I-68 west to I79 north towards Pittsburgh from I-81 in Maryland, you can avoid tolls on the PA. Turnpike, and also avoid some traffic.
Each state has a 511 website with current conditions regarding construction, accidents and traffic speeds. It should be checked right before any trip. The www.pa511.com version shows traffic speeds in neighboring states also.
It will also help to careful schedule your driving times to try to avoid the worst of weekday rush hours in the major metro areas. I try to schedule breakfast and dinner stops to sit out the worst congestion times.
Monticello is definitely worth a stop. I believe they now offer advanced timed ticket sales. Even if you are not applying to UVa, it is well worth a stop to see Mr. Jefferson’s designs for The Lawn in the center of UVa, which is 10 minutes from Monticello.
Another interesting stop on the way to Pittsburgh is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
If you want to bypass DC from Va then 301 north of Richmond and go over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis and go up through Delaware isn’t a bad drive.
The stretch of I-95 between DC and Richmond has to be one of the worst stretches of highway in the country (granted I’ve never driven in LA). It starts out as 6+ lanes outside DC and gradually goes down to two around Fredericksburg (a neat historic tourist stop, btw). So the whole thing is a bottleneck and can turn into a parking lot. As others have suggested, plan alternate routes, use 511, leave plenty of time, and if at all possible, drive at 2am. :)) Even then, no guarantees.