<p>Is it possible to visit Dartmouth College and Williams College in one day?</p>
<p>If it’s possible, should we start from Dartmouth or Williams?</p>
<p>What about Penn and Swartmore?</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Williams are about 2.5 hours apart, so depending on the timing of the tours and info sessions, it should be doable. Which one you should start from depends on where you are coming from and where you want to be when the visits are finished. Both are located in rather isolated small towns</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Williams in one day is pushing it; it’s about a two and a half hour drive between the two. You could certainly manage to see both places in one day, especially in the summer or early fall, but you might not be able to squeeze in organized visits (i.e. info session/tour) to both. You might want to decide which one you are most interested in, schedule a morning visit to that one, and settle for a late afternoon walkaround at the other.</p>
<p>Which place you should start from depends on how you’re getting to the area, and where you’re going to be before and after.</p>
<p>Penn and Swarthmore are only about a half hour apart, so that seems manageable.</p>
<p>Penn and Swartthmore in one day would be easy. Depending on the traffic it should take about a 1/2 hour to get from one to the other. You can even do it by SEPTA if you aren’t going to have a car. Dartmouth and Williams could be a challenge. It is a 2 1/2 hour drive from one to the other (it is a pretty drive though!). You’ll need check their websites and see when tours, info sessions, etc. are offered to see if it will work out.</p>
<p>IMO, it will mostly depend on the timing of info sessions/tours at both schools. When D and I were doing the college road trips, there were several instances where we could have fit in 2 schools in one day in terms of driving/distance, but the schools’ schedules didn’t work.</p>
<p>One other thought: If you schedule these visits in foliage season–roughly late September through mid-to-late October–be prepared to add at least an extra half-hour to that 2.5 hour drive, especially Thursday through Monday.</p>
<p>Wife & daughter had trouble doing Middlebury & Dartmouth in one day, and these schools are only about an hour apart. After touring Middlebury in the morning and sitting in on a couple classes, they basically ended up touring Dartmouth on their own later in the day.</p>
<p>Penn and Swarthmore, absolutely. If you are not driving during rush hour, it’s twenty minutes from one campus to the other. And Swarthmore isn’t so huge that it takes hours and hours to see it (although it would be perfectly possible to spend hours and hours looking at it, if you wanted).</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Williams is a little more of a stretch, but only a little. They are maybe a couple of hours apart. It would help if you were already at one of them in the morning (since each is a good distance away from anywhere else you might start), and if you planned to spend the evening at the other. Which place to start depends on which has an afternoon tour, I suppose. Both are bigger than Swarthmore, but a lot less spread out than Penn. Unless you are going to do something like go to the Clark at Williams (a great idea), you can see everything there is to see at either in a couple of hours.</p>
<p>One interesting difference – with Dartmouth and Williams, their relationship to the surrounding natural world is really important. Some of the buildings are pretty, some not so, but if all you are looking at is the buildings you are missing important stuff. The same thing is true about Penn, but in a different way – half or more of what’s special about Penn is its proximity to exciting things elsewhere in Philadelphia. Swarthmore is a little different. It has its own little sensational gorge and arboretum on campus, but otherwise it’s just in a pleasant, wealthy suburb, with a mall nearby and a train line into Philadelphia. You don’t really have to pay attention to anything that’s not on the tour.</p>
<p>I’ll add that I don’t get how it could possibly take 2.5 hours or more to go from one to the other, absent terrible conditions. I know that’s what Google maps says, but it doesn’t quite compute. I’ve never driven between the two, but I’ve driven from Hanover to Greenfield MA in just over an hour (OK, that involved a generous interpretation of speed restrictions, but nothing awful), and I’ve driven from Greenfield to North Adams (a couple of miles from Williamstown) in a lot less than an hour (it’s only about 20-25 miles). That’s not the most direct route, but it is the most superhighway-ed route.</p>
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You could do it in two hours by averaging 75 mph on the Hanover-to-Greenfield I-91 leg and 45 mph on the Greenfield-to-Williams Rte. 2 leg–a road which is mostly two-lane undivided and quite hilly and winding. Certainly not impossible for a good driver in good weather, but I don’t think most people would want to plan their day around having to drive that fast on unfamiliar roads.</p>
<p>Agree that Penn and Swat can be done in one day, but don’t count on that 20 minute drive! I have done that drive many times over the last 4 years and there is ALWAYS some problem on the roads (no matter which way you go). It’s what prompted H to say “driving around here is like sticking knives in your eyes.”</p>
<p>We did Amherst, Dartmouth, and Williams in a day. Admittedly, we short-changed Amherst a bit.</p>
<p>I’ve done the drive between the 2. Don’t depend upon it being any less than 2.5 hours - and this is from someone who consistently beats the mapquest estimates by significant times on long drives. The roads between the 2 schools don’t lend themselves to driving 10 mph over the limit (which is where you make up most of that time).</p>
<p>Just have to interject here that you all are talking about my hometown – Greenfield, MA! </p>
<p>Also, as mentioned, Rt. 2, from Greenfield to North Adams, is scenic in nice weather, a pain in bad weather, and not conducive to speeding in any weather.</p>
<p>I had been planning Williams and Amherst in the same day, but instead we ended up with Wellesley and Amherst in the same day, and an easy trip. Amherst does a 3:00 info session with 4:00 tour, which made things easy.</p>
<p>Route 91 is fast but Route 2 over the mountains from the interstate to Williamstown is very winding (also very beautiful). For some reason it looks better driving west (to W’town) so I would do Dartmouth first. That said, would not really think of a Williams visit as being easily doable in the same day as a Dartmouth visit–too rushed and you’d have to plan on taking the latest Willams tour (assuming there is one in late afternoon.) Incidentally, why not include Amherst on the visit list? That is certainly easily visited on the same day as Williams and whatever the stereotypes about the two schools they are very similar in many ways–and admission at either one is a challenge.</p>
<p>I think Hanover has more going on than Williamstown in terms of a place to casually spend extra time as a tourist rather than just a college visitor–more shops certainly. Both have museums, live theater and a movie theater, but Hanover has always felt like more of a place to me–possibly because it has both a huge green and cross-streets. (I have spent quite a lot of time in both towns at various stages of my life.)</p>
<p>Hanover really doesn’t have anything that matches up with the double-barreled power of the Clark and MassMoCA in North Adams, though, or the Williamstown Theater (when it’s running). Dartmouth doesn’t have anything remotely approaching the quality level of any of them. (What it does have is a medical center/school and a business school, either of which may matter to some applicants.)</p>
<p>My kids know the Berkshires pretty well from years of visiting relatives there, and for both of them “Williams” was code for “the middle of nowhere, where I don’t want to be”. When I visited Dartmouth with my son, after 40 minutes his reaction was, “So, tell me how this is different from Williams, because I don’t see it.”</p>
<p>The Hood Museum in Hanover is excellent and right across a little plaza from Hopkins Center. Although it isn’t quite on the level of the Clark, it is well worth visiting and offers more varied exhibits than the Williams College Museum of Art. MassMoCA in North Adams is another kettle of fish; you might just as well add the Montshire Science Museum to the Hanover list of museums once you start getting out of immediate college/walking distance area. (Actually even the Clark isn’t right in downtown W’town such as it is and would be an awfully long walk on a very hot or very cold day, both of which are abundant in northwestern Massachusetts!)</p>
<p>Neither Dartmouth nor Williams is really in the middle of nowhere; they are in thriving towns in popular tourist areas. Hanover especially is a real-life regional center for people in the Upper Valley, a a picturesque alternative to West Lebanon for some types of shopping. Hopkins Center offers cultural events year-round, not just student theater but professional concerts and so on. Maybe not the glamour of *** but reliable and appealing all the same.</p>
<p>One person’s nowhere is another person’s idyllic place. I’m the parent of a Williams alum but even so I like Hanover better as a place to visit. As far as students and their parents, I think they are both very appealing; both schools and their towns are likely to delight some prospective students and not others–just as there will be those who love Columbia or Chicago and those who feel they’re too urban. Opinions and tastes vary.</p>
<p>Williamstown is ideal for those who can’t handle the hectic pace of and high urban lifestyle of Hanover.</p>
<p>“Williamstown is ideal for those who can’t handle the hectic pace of and high urban lifestyle of Hanover.”</p>
<p>Or who don’t want to and would rather go on a hike or ski.</p>