<p>LOL. Perhaps it might come as a surprise to you that a clear majority of kids at HYP come from a plane-ride away—or at any rate more than half-a-day’s drive. At Princeton, for example, 608 members of the entering class come from states in the Northeast Corridor (Massachusetts through Virginia), while 149 hail from California, 136 are internationals, 48 are from Texas, 47 from Illinois, 43 from Florida, 29 from Ohio, 67 from other Midwestern states, 74 from other Southeastern states, 68 from other Western states (including Alaska & Hawaii), and 31 are US citizens abroad. That’s 692 who are not from the Northeast Corridor. Odd how people in other regions don’t find it so difficult or prohibitively expensive to travel. </p>
<p>Princeton doesn’t include travel costs in its estimated cost-of-attendance, but urges that you budget in $100 to $2,500 for travel. $2,500 is 5 $500 trips or 2 $1250 trips (for internationals or US citizens abroad). Most kids from the Midwest find it relatively easy to get home for the holidays on that. (I certainly did at the two Ivies I attended). </p>
<p>At many other schools, financial aid is based on a cost-of-attendance that includes a travel budget, the amount of which varies depending on the distance you need to travel between home and school. At Yale, for example, if your family income is $60K or less, Yale will pick up the entire tab including travel, whether your estimated travel cost is $100 or $2500. If your household income is $60K to $120, you’ll pay on a sliding scale from 1% of income at the lower end to 10% of income at the higher end; again, travel costs don’t matter as Yale pays anything over that percentage of your income. If you earn between $120K and $200K, you pay a flat 10% of income; same deal on travel costs. Now Chicago’s FA policies may not be as generous; that’s something you’d need to investigate. But before dismissing a school out-of-hand on the basis of travel costs, it’s worth examining the school’s FA formula. It may not cost nearly as much as you think to send your kid to a school a plane-ride away, depending on whether the school includes travel in its COA for FA purposes. Here’s how Yale’s works, clearly stating that the “allowance for travel is based on the student’s home address.”</p>
<p>BINGO. Again, give me a break. The brilliant kids from Iowa and Oklahoma and Wyoming and Minnesota manage to get on them thar flyin’ machines, but kids who live within spitting distance of major airports – oh, howEVER would they get to other parts of the country, it’s just a conundrum!</p>
<p>(Emphasis mine). My point exactly. Two holiday-fare trips could set back a heavy FA family for the year, depending on the distance.</p>
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<p>The understatement of the thread. (And the point is, if any far-away school’s FA policies are not generous to begin with, adding distant travel is prohibitive for a needing family.)</p>
<p>But isn’t it possible to understand, and even embrace, this message while still critiquing the culture that produces the disappointment in the first place?</p>
<p>Please don’t assume that I don’t know where kids who go to HYP come from. Of my S’s roommates, none came from MA. That is precisely why I played host to some of them! </p>
<p>Most US students go to college near home. For people in the NE, going to college near home includes (but is not limited to, in case posters think I’m out of my mind) attending an Ivy or a LAC. There is plenty to choose from! Of course, not all students who attend HYP are local. I’ve never claimed that. All I am claiming is that there are plenty of great colleges to choose from in the NE, that is why going away is not as tempting as for residents of other states.</p>
<p>The airlines are struggling. I’m sure they love the attitude displayed here. Why attend college a car-ride away, a bus or subway ride away or even within walking distance if you can fly?</p>
<p>PG: Are schools in Wyoming or Oklahoma on your itinerary? Can you tell me which? I’ll put them on my list of recommendations for those who are fixated on HYP or bust.</p>
<p>First time I read these things. That’s pretty sad. Even though they don’t write much, as someone with plenty of experience with disappointment, I can pretty much inagine what they’re thinking. But a lot of deferred and still RD to go.</p>
<p>Normally on the Parents Forum when a parent comes on and says here are my kids’ stats / interest areas and can you all suggest some colleges to fit this criteria, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hesitation to recommend Harvard to the bright kid from Minnesota, but I suppose in the future there should be hesitation to recommend Carleton to the bright kid from Massachusetts.</p>
<p>No, but so far, our list includes these states: Colorado, DC area, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio and potentially Oregon and Washington.</p>
<p>Kids in the Northeast don’t have to fly to have a dazzlingly wide assortment of colleges and universities. I can’t think of a single kind of school that’s not within reasonable driving distance of NYC. Top LACs, big state universities, service academies, Jesuit universities, the Ivys, very urban schools, very rural schools. It’s all here. Now Wyoming has its charms, but lots of nearby colleges and universities is not one of them.</p>
<p>Been there. We all hate to see our children disappointed. But firebombing? One of my kids didn’t get into his first choice Ivy ED, didn’t get in at all actually. But like the majority of the kids with academic records and test scores that put them in the ballpark of an Ivy admission, he did get into some AMAZING schools, picked one and is thriving, just like I always knew he would. He’s not the least bit resentful. I think sometimes it is the parents that have a harder time getting over it.</p>
<p>Actually, PG, S2 had a chat with an adcom from a NE school frequently mentioned on CC, and the adcom asked S where else he was considering applying. When S told the adcom (and the list included three midwestern schools with similar outlook and strengths), the adcom specifically commented that s/he was impressed S was looking at “those hidden gems.” I suspect it demonstrated that S was not just trophy-hunting, and that there was a reasoned rationale to his list.</p>
<p>S2 will not look at a school in the east, outside of a couple near the Gulf of Mexico. He has the stats for those midwestern or eastern schools people here talk about, even visited a couple, none were interesting enough to overcome the weather factor. Prestige, it appears, has its limits. He is confident that wherever he goes he will be successful so he is not concerned. Love his attitude. On the other hand most of the schools are as far from where we live as NY is from Chicago. The pacific west is a big place.</p>
<p>I grew up in a flyover state, and most of the strong students in my public high school never considered going to Flyover State U. This was in the 70’s and dozens of us went to far away Ivies and top LAC’s and we all thought this was completely normal. I was very surprised to find that my Ivy was such a <em>regional</em> school. The students were overwhelmingly from the NE; I’m sure there were far more foreign students than kids from the western states and there were only 5 total from my home state. I never went home for any vacation other than winter break, but I did notice how much easier it was for the kids from the NE. I was happy to be far away, but I did envy their travel convenience and the ease of remaining in their home culture.</p>
<p>My husband and I encouraged our kids to remain close by for college, mostly for financial reasons, but also after our own experience, we saw no educational reason to travel so far and we knew how much easier it would be to stay close to home. We both also felt that the education we received in our respective high schools (his in a foreign country) had actually been stronger than at our Ivy, so we weren’t swayed by the hype.</p>
<p>Precisely what a lot of parents and students in my neck of the woods tell themselves, including those who do not aspire to HYPM. As I keep repeating, there are plenty of colleges to choose from within a 3-hour drive radius (well, not really a radius, since going east will dump you into the sea; it’s different in the Midwest). It’s not as if every last college-bound students in the NE aspires to go to HYPM; but for the very high achievers, there is no reason not to want to go to HYPM and to be disappointed if one does not get in. It does not mean that students who have HYPM in their sights are not applying to other colleges as well. Some may even be located outside the NE. How else would NMD’s S end up in Chicago?</p>
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<p>That’s what S2 said about Stanford and schools located in places where the sun shines all the time.:)</p>
<p>By the way, S got a free ticket on the Megabus.:)</p>
<p>Mileage varies. One of my few “rules” was “no college within 200 miles.” D was happy, we were happy…next case. And it’s not that we didn’t miss each other and that travel wasn’t a PITA at times. But.</p>
<p>D has turned into a fairly sharp observer. As an Auslander, she came up with some funny observations about New England tribalism that probably elude those who live amidst it. </p>
<p>The routine of being “away” for college certainly helped the transition to being “away” for her first job. Special case, admittedly, but what she’s interested in has employment opportunities pretty much only in one city on the East Coast. Karma. The self-reliance we looked to foster is now there in spades, doubled and redoubled.</p>
<p>Don’t misunderstand: I can’t wait until she gets home a week from tomorrow night. But she’s doing what she needs to be doing where she needs to be doing it and neither of us begrudge her that for a moment.</p>
<p>Bovertine: the overwhelming percentage of those who are deferred into the RD round will be ultimately rejected. The sanest policy is to treat a deferral as a “NO” and to make other plans.</p>
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<p>I’ve tried selling Grinnell and Carleton and Macalester as options to some West Coast parents. Let’s just say it goes a lot easier with Middlebury and Bates and Tufts, even if they’ve never heard of them.</p>
<p>TheDad: You know that I probably traveled further than anyone on this thread to go to college. My kids’ unwillingness to travel far–though welcome–actually bemused me. I could not even get S2 to study abroad for one term! He said he’d had enough traveling, thank you. As for meeting people from different countries, he could do so on campus.
But it’s true that distances don’t mean the same thing in the Midwest or in Tx or CA as they do in New England. Still, 200 miles will get you to NYC. A very popular destination for Boston-area students, just as Boston is a very popular destination for NY students.</p>
<p>I believe that the differences between what is advertised on the various websites and the reality of what is included in the OFFICIAL COA might be considerable. For instance, most schools will entertain changes to the COA to reflect additional and substantiated travel costs. However, even if a school accepts a higher budget for basic travel, do not assume that it suffices to show a full-fare ticket. Here you can safely assume that the school is using precise guidelines that are more aligned to the cost of Greyhound than to United Airlines’. Further, do not assume that the school will cover more than a COUPLE of RT tickets per year. Thinking that the school will magically cover Thanksgiving or Fall or Easter breaks is as close to wishful thinking as you’ll get. At best, students will be expected to use their “other expenses” budget to cover the non-essential trips. And, fwiw, the fact that the dining halls or even the dorms might be closed makes little difference. </p>
<p>And, as a point of reference, I might add that my undergraduate school, despite it stellar reputation for offering wonderful aid, used the same figure for travel for the four years. If the budget was “light” in the first year, it became woefully insufficient for airline travel in the subsequent years. Luckily, the alternative of a couple of days of driving WITH friends was the answer. When the gas prices jumped higher, the answer was to add a friend!</p>
<p>One conclusion is that students will get home, but not as frequently as one might think, and might have to use less convenient and cheaper alternatives to “live” with the COA, including a revised COA that includes more travel expenses. Another one is that it WILL cost the parents more than a few pennies to participate in the various activities heavily promoted by the schools. Perhaps you could poll the CC parents and ask how many times they traveled to the college to help packing and unpacking or simply attend the Parents’ Weekends. And, the last time I checked, no COA included a COPH aka Cost of Parental Helicoptering! </p>
<p>I encouraged both of my kids to “explore” by going to college in parts of the country with which they were not familiar. Both are a couple of thousands of miles away, and both are learning much about regional differences. I view this additional learning hugely beneficial. It may cost us several hundred bucks per year more, but I think it’s well worth the cost.</p>
<p>As a grad of a Mass public high school, U of Wyoming and a Colorado U, married to a midwesterner, residing on the east coast with kids at a midwest LAC and an Ivy-who-must-not-be-named for fear of revealing my elitist nature, I take offense.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, how do you manage to get through airport security with that chip on your shoulder?</p>