@OceanIsle - there are so many factors and no answer is right. It’s what works best for your family.
Our kid is just over 2 hours away. We love it. It made move in easy, parent weekend easy and his coming home for breaks very easy! We can do a round trip easily in one day. I’m glad we don’t have to deal with the hassle and expense of air travel.
I think the ideal location would be a 2-4 hour drive. That gives some space and independence, but it’s nice to have the ability to come home for a weekend if desired. Back in the day, I selected a college that was a Very long drive, not near an airport etc, and although I enjoyed college very much, a year into school I really regretted the inability to come home during the semester.
For undergrad we had no restrictions but our comfort zone was up to 6 hr drive with possibility to take bus, train and flights as well.
One ended up within couple of hours drive distance and we all saw big benefits of that decision.
For graduate/professional school, there shouldn’t be any limit. Four years are a good transition period to master independence and get ready for long distance living.
It can be logistically difficult to send a 17 yr old somewhere only accessible by air travel or crazy long drive, they won’t be able to visit home as often and you won’t be able to visit them whenever needed. Emergencies happen and it helps to be able to hop in a car and go. Air travel can be expensive and delayed flights can be a nightmare.
When we get to the point of real college searching (DD is 7th grade) I know that I want her to go far enough away to experience a new location and being in NE she’ll have tons of options less than an 8 hour drive away or a direct flight away. I’m really more concerned with the difficulty of the travel during winter break like if she went to Ithaca but got snowed in and the 8 hour drive is treacherous vs flying to Houston and driving a few hours through 65 degree weather to campus. Also I’ve scrapped any consideration for a school like Whitman in Walla Walla. I’ve driven/greyhound there lots from Portland and there’s just no easy way to get there plus winter weather is treacherous. So it’s not really a strict time or distance for me but all the other considerations along with the travel.
Ideal would be within public transit commuting of a major airport. We have that with D19. Deal breaker would be inaccessible to an airport without a car or a ton of money. At one school my D20 is looking at it costs $180 round trip to the airport. That’s pretty close to what it would cost D19 for the airport trip and a round trip flight halfway across the country.
As a family we decided against commuter schools or colleges within an hour of hometown filled with same high school crowd.
New places and new possibilities add a sense of excitement for going to college and new environment helps them grow.
At this age, they need to learn to live on their own and learn new points of view. It’s necessary to limit parental influence so young adults can develop their own identity.
I am telling you having our kids from 2 hours to 3.5-4 hours away is awfully nice for both kids and parents. Both have direct access to amtrack or busses to easily come home (neither has car on campus) for cheap like $25.00 student pricing. As mentioned it’s great for a quick lunch or dinner or event and if we want to come right back home. Don’t even have to board the dog (depends on what we are doing) for the longer drive we do.
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ838811 This is a bit old, but states that the median distance students go from home is 94 miles.
Restricting our kids to less than a 6 hour drive would be the same as keeping them in state at one of our three state universities or two or three odd privates. It would have kept one of them out of her first choice of major. Living in the west is that way. They applied all over. One school my son considered involved a 3+ hour plane flight and a 2.5 hour drive. I’ll admit to being relieved he didn’t choose that one although it was a fantastic school for what he is pursuing and we would have let him go.
All my kids went a 3-4 hour flight away and less then an hour from the airport. The hard part is when they stay that far away after graduation. 
@jym626. Was looking up other articles that were recent and some were saying 70 % of kids are about 2 hours away… So that seems to hold true
One thing I would tell parents and most likely already did is consider if your kids perform or are involved with something you might want to go to. We were able to go, whenever to see my daughters plays or events driving that 2 hour drive vs a plane ride, hotel boarding the dog (sometimes still boarded the dog), going to the airport. Getting a cab etc… It all adds up quickly and lots of families can’t really afford the “extras” making going to parents weekend and such more of a chore then enjoyment.
Living in a mid-size town in flyover land doesn’t give you many choices when your kids’ top schools are on either coasts. We definitely did not consider the state u located in our town because we wanted the kids to meet new people and start developing more independence. The biggest pain was that neither kids had direct flights (D at least 2, S at least 1 connection), and we experienced a number of flight delays/missed connections because of weather. Transportation to and from the airport from school, while not inconvenient (45 min and 90 min), was not cheap.
I think distances are less of an issue these days with Skype, FaceTime, Snap, etc… I might have talked to my parents once a month on the telephone using my Sprint LD card. We FT with both kids at least once a week, and group Snap text almost every day.
@Knowsstuff - yes- have seen that statistic as well- that about 70% go no
More than 2 hrs away.
We made no distance restrictions for our S’s and we looked all over the country. We live near a large airport, but some rural schools are hard to travel to from the nearest airport. That said, both s’s chose schools a flight away. One was driveable but a long 7.5 -8 hr drive. The inter was a 13.5 hr drive. Did that only once or twice.
We focused on schools 2-4 hours away. The only school DS20 applied to that required a flight we ended up disregarding because it just seemed like too much of a hassle. This realization came when we were just trying to figure out when we could do a visit. The hassle/expense factor was enough that the thought of having to to do this several times a year as well as him not being able to come home except over winter break.
I think 2 hours is probably perfect. It’s far enough that they’re not coming home every weekend, but close enough that I can run up after work on a Friday and pick him up and be home at a reasonable time.
We haven’t made any restrictions, but ideally 2 hours if they can’t have a car and I have to get them, 4 if they have a car and no major airport. By a major airport, any distance is fine. Having Southwest fly direct is nice- if you plan flights early enough it isn’t that bad.
D18 has a car with a 9 hour drive and a major airport and goes to a school that is a great tourist destination, that means you throw out the rules and take a train one way, spend several days vacationing and then help her drive home!
I think the distance issue varies greatly with geography and climate.Driving eight hours in a flatter, warmer or dryer areas is very different from eight hours in slippery, wet snow with hairpin turns passing though mountainous areas of the east.
I lived in the Canadian Rockies for a few years and don’t remember having any trouble driving in the mountains in winter with my old Honda Civic (and no special tires that I can remember). The only issue was plugging in the car at night to keep the engine warm enough to start in the morning …but those plug-ins were everywhere as virtually everyone had to have them. I also lived awhile in the outer suburbs of Chicagoland and had to drive a lot in my job. I found the winter driving exhausting but not terribly scary, as long as you didn’t drive too fast. I find winter driving much more treacherous in the East, with the spine of the Appalachians cutting into your trip if you go just a few hours east or west from practically the Canadian border to Georgia. Wet, near-freezing/re-freezing roads are just much more slippery. so even though you may have longer distances to drive in the West and often very cold temps, I think some very long swaths may be easier driving than the twisty little hills and mountains of the humid east. I haven’t been everywhere in the west so I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions to what I’m saying.
Someone mentioned worries about getting a student home for winter holidays and that is my main issue. We will have to go through mountainous areas no matter where my D goes to school so two to five hours in any direction will be plenty to deal with!
But I do want her to go at least two hours away, to a school that attracts students from many other areas and countries. That’s a big part of the value of going away to school.
I do think that it really depends on the student. Our son comes home Thanksgiving and Christmas and summer and drives each time (9 1/2 hours). Doesn’t bother him at all. He grew up where driving across town took 1 1/2 hours so driving is not big deal to him. I feel safe with him doing the driving. I go up there once a year and fly. Again not a problem even though campus is a couple hours from the major airport. We asked him to go somewhere we could fly Southwest since it is the cheapest option for us. If he was closer we still wouldn’t see him. He likes his independence.
Now if we were talking about my D. I would want her close to home. She has severe depression and I would need to get to her quickly if needed.
My son is a three hour drive away and it has been great. We live in Massachusetts and he goes to school in Maine. He can easily get rides to Massachusetts and rides back to Maine. It has been really convenient.
DS would probably do best keeping distance to 2-3 hours of driving. That range includes our state’s flagship and a very selective private university (about 11% admissions rate). Most of the other options though are urban, or are regional publics where less than half of students graduate after 6 years. Makes us quite envious of people living in the northeast or other areas with a high concentration of excellent and diverse colleges. Consequently, we’ll probably expand out to about 6 hours of driving or an easy nonstop flight away (to a place with multiple nonstops a day).
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