<p>We’re on the West Coast. D went to school in the Northeast and is now in DC for first job after college. Will probably be there for about three years total before heading off to grad school…after which she’ll probably return to DC. Fortunately, it’s a place I like to visit.</p>
<p>S1 graduated in May for school far, far away. Knew when he left 4 years ago he would never return to KS full-time. He is currently enrolled in PhD program far, far away too. Still will not return here when finished in next 4-5 years. </p>
<p>Is expected, they go off to college, finish growing up, move out and move on. It is a good thing.</p>
<p>My oldest son who went out of state (Florida) ended up meeting a Florida girl, falling in love with her and the state, and stayed!! </p>
<p>He got a great job out of college and has settled down with a new wife, in his new adopted state. You know when they get a drivers license and change the plates on the car that they aren’t coming back!! :)</p>
<p>Agree, ag54. S1 sent photo of car w/ new license plate and it is a real reality check. No moving back home. But like I said, it is a good thing. Isn’t that what we did??</p>
<p>DD1 went to school in the state where we lived when she started. We moved across country the summer before her senior year. After graduation, she did one year of grad school in yet another state and is currently overseas with the Peace Corps. She will finish grad school when she returns, but we have no idea where we will be living - we are due to transfer this summer. And who knows where she will end up. DD2 will finish up in this state; we will be somewhere else. And DD3 is applying to schools in three different states - any of which we may or may not be in when she graduates.</p>
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<p>Yeah, let’s keep telling ourselves that 
LOL</p>
<p>At least he’s living in a great beach side city! I’ll be the grandma who comes to babysit!</p>
<p>But, I convinced my next two to stay in-state :)</p>
<p>I think every parent whose child goes OOS needs to accept that their child may claim that new area as “home” after graduation. The job offers might be there, the love of their life might be there, or they may just not want to live in their home town anymore.</p>
<p>My new graduate stayed in the city where she went to school. It is 600 miles away - she stayed there in the summers during school so she only <em>visits</em> now.
After graduation she, her bf and another couple rented a house and signed a one year lease - I was kinda mad since it has restricted her area for her job search. Better than her coming home though! ;)</p>
<p>I think map’s point above is very well taken. Many, many students either stay around here or come back here because the Chicago area is very attractive to young people and has jobs.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can “bring them home” if they don’t want to. Sadly for many of us with OOS kids, postgrad, it’s their decision and not ours. </p>
<p>That said, my D loves her home state of Colorado but finds it somewhat limited in terms of work/grad school opportunities in her field… </p>
<p>California-based niece went to an Ivy but work took her to Texas… </p>
<p>Close friends who sent their sons to schools Connecticut and Massachusetts saw both boys return home to the Bay Area within minutes of graduating. </p>
<p>The results are as varied as the kids themselves.</p>
<p>My S stayed instate for college, grad. in May and moved to Florida last weekend where he will be for at least eighteen months. He’s in the military. After his FL stint, He hopes for CA. Then he will likely be deployed Iraq/Afghanistan. So even though he stayed close by for college, he will prob. not live here again for a long time, if ever.</p>
<p>Of the three who have graduated, one has moved back and the other two are in the state where they went to school. One of the two who are OOS, did come back and work for about a year, before traveling out of the country for several months. Our fourth has no plans to return once he graduates.</p>
<p>My daughter just graduated from college in Chicago. She was prepared to stay and look for a job there, since she knew how to live cheaply and find subsistence jobs there, and she had people to live with. But then a job offer in New York City came through, and she moved there. It’s been pretty great for us, compared to Chicago. We have been able to see her there a few times, and she has come home twice. (But there’s a chance that we, the parents, may be looking at a move to a different part of the country, so we are cherishing the opportunities we have to see her now.)</p>
<p>Where you go to college or graduate school probably affects where you live as a statistical matter, but individual cases are all over the lot.</p>
<p>I grew up in Western NY. My youngest sister went to college at Arizona, worked in San Francisco for a decade, and then moved back home and lived with our parents while she was in graduate school. She lives three blocks from them now, and is in their hair constantly. My other sister went to Stanford, and essentially has not left the Bay Area since. My brother lived at home and went to the local SUNY, then to graduate school in Arizona, and settled in the NYC suburbs. I went to college on the East Coast, about a 7 hour drive from home, and I live about 6 hours away in a different part of the East Coast now. It matters that the city where I grew up has been slowly but visibly dying since I was a boy. My friends who stayed there after college – they’re not happy, and some have moved away even in the past few years.</p>
<p>Two of my sisters-in-law live within 15 miles of the LACs where they went to college, a couple of hours or less from where their parents lived (although one didn’t move back there from NYC until she was 40). One lives blocks from the university where she went to graduate school (and where she has taught ever since). We live where my wife went to law school (about 3,000 miles from where I went to law school).</p>
<p>Of my close friends that graduated with me May 2009, almost all are not living in their home states. One is, but just temporarily until she starts Peace Corps in South America. Most of us went home immediately after graduation to pack/celebrate/say goodbye and then headed out to the cities where our new jobs were (or where we hoped we find new jobs eventually). A few went overseas to do peace corps or service work. </p>
<p>Some people do go back to their home states after attending OOS, but I think very few, unless they want to work in an industry that happens to be located there. The compulsion to start your own separate life is pretty strong, especially after four years of semi-independent living. </p>
<p>Take heart though, parents of OOS kids. At least some will probably return to home states when they’re ready to settle down and have kids of their own. That’s my plan!</p>
<p>D–undergrad OOS made her want to go to grad school instate(California). But she plans on living in Europe for a few years after her MM. I am happy to have her just a few minutes away for a few years but never once considered not sending her OOS because she might not “come home”. It is her life path, not mine.</p>
<p>Our kids have told us they will go where the job offer is. BUT both do plan on being in the same time zone as we are. Right now, one kiddo is on the opposite coast and says that after graduation she will head back to this coast…unless the job offer is where she is.</p>
<p>My son graduated from an in-state public and is now living and working in a major city in a different state – I’m just happy that he’s still on the west coast. His first job offer after he graduated was in upstate New York – so he moved – then he applied for a position with the same organization in a city more to his likely when the opening came up (and it was the logical next step up from his first position). </p>
<p>I think that for purposes of employment, being willing to relocate is a huge plus – my son had a job offer near home, but it didn’t have anywhere near the same potential for growth and advancement. He had actually applied for a local position with the organization that now employs him – they gave the local job to a different application, and asked if they could circulate his resume to other parts of the country. </p>
<p>Of course it all depends on where “home” is and what type of employment the person is looking for or is qualified for at the time of graduation. But simple math tells you that the applicant who is willing to relocate is going to have more possibilities. I also think that it was a help that my son was willing to go to a less-desirable location. (Nothing wrong with the city where he first worked – it’s just a small town rather than a big city). As it happens he is now in a city that is a real hot spot – plenty of people would want to work there – but he even got the current job by applying for a position in a different, slightly less desirable location. (Same story, passed over for the position he applied for, but the resume sent on for consideration for the same position in a different city – while he had applied for a position that had been publicly posted, he got hired for an opening that had not yet been listed).</p>
<p>My D, who is a sophomore at a school in the Northeast (we are in Southern Cal), has it all figured out - she plans on being bicoastal :)</p>
<p>Given the tendency for companies to recruit in their own backyard, it’s common for kids to find jobs relatively close to their colleges – which may be far from home in some instances.</p>
<p>My son is a graduate student in California. I don’t really expect him to come back to the East Coast after he finishes his degree, even though that’s where he grew up.</p>
<p>My daughter went to undergrad on the east coast and planned to come back to California and live/work/or go to grad school here. She wound up taking a graduate school offer on the east coast. She has lived there now for over 6 years, and I doubt that she’ll ever really live on the west coast again.
My son is at a California college and plans to stay in California after he graduates. One of the reasons he decided on a California school is that he hoped it would lead to in-state opportunities. He’s interested in local and state government, so it may work out for him. I hope so. It’s nice to have a least one kid close by.</p>