<p>ok... all my college choices are 8 or more hours away from my home so i will most likely be flying home. How much do you others living far from home spend on travel? an how often do you go home?</p>
<p>I find the cheapest seats I can to fly home and come home the least I possibly can. I came home for Thanksgiving, I'm coming home for Christmas, and possibly spring break, but probably not. I spend maybe $300 on a round-trip flight total. This is coast-to-coast travel so I don't really have a lot of options on this though.</p>
<p>Yeah I have my heart set on going to Wash U in St. Louis. As you may be aware, the closest major hub to St. Louis is freaking DFW. Good thing I live in Dallas, else I'd be paying ~800 round trip.</p>
<p>Because of the fares, I decided to stay here for Thanksgiving (which wasn't so bad here, considering that the weather is freezing at home and it's in the 70s here). But I am spending $250 R/T on JetBlue to go home for the winter break.</p>
<p>im from alabama and attend Howard University in DC and my flights are $150-$200. Do not buy your tickets on travelocity/expedia/orbits/etc. Try</p>
<p><a href="http://www.studentuniverse.com%5B/url%5D">http://www.studentuniverse.com</a></p>
<p>They are a lot cheaper for students.</p>
<p>Southwest has really good deals, I go from Oakland to Houston for about $160-$170 roundtrip, but you have to watch for the specials to get the good fares with them.</p>
<p>Use <a href="http://www.sidestep.com%5B/url%5D">www.sidestep.com</a>. It's a search engine for air fares, very helpful!</p>
<p>Go home twice a year-Christmas and summer. Thanksgiving/Spring breaks really aren't that long, and it's kind of fun having the dorm to yourself (there were probably 4 of us on a 60 person floor). If you go to a school with a lot of kids from far away, staff, professors, and other students will volunteer to take you in. I had about 8 or 9 serious offers for thanksgiving, and I ended up eating thanksgiving dinner with my professor, her family, and 4 other students. It was really fun and cheap! (we students did the green bean casserole!)</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is if any of the cities these schools are located in are airline "hubs" or punch the cities into orbitz and see your likelyhood of getting a cheap and/or direct flight. It doesn't seem that important now, but saving $100 per trip and having a direct route might be nice if you're looking at a few schools that you like fairly equally.</p>