<p>You guys are absolutely right; that’s a subset of probably the hardest schools in the country to get into, and the D and I are well aware of that. </p>
<p>We’re also going to do a California swing, and she has some other, easer-to-get-into schools in mind as well as the good ol’ University of Washington here in Seattle. She was accepted into UW Honors as a high school soph, so that’s her fallback. She’s worked very hard through school, though, and I’m not going to discourage her at all for reaching for the stars this time around. Who knows, these schools have to let SOMEONE in, right?</p>
<p>Thanks for the heads-up, though; very good advice.</p>
<p>take the metro north train from grand central station to new haven- $13, and they run every 30 minutes (every hour on the weekends). get a car in new haven and drive to providence (that section of 95 isnt bad at all and its a very nice ride).</p>
<p>Yeah. This is a question of a) how much you don’t like to drive b) how much you don’t like to spend money.</p>
<p>It’s doable on public transportation, but your brain will have to be full of schedules. It’s doable by driving, but you will have to pay extra for the one-way dropoff and extra for parking in the cities. </p>
<p>So it’s personal - you make the call. </p>
<p>Me, being a Californian and ex-Manhattanite, I like to drive and am willing to brave both Boston and New York. So in your circumstances, twice, I have rented a car and driven from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. I did, however, nix the car when it came to getting from Philly to Raleigh-Durham and from Raligh-Durham to Miami…</p>
<p>As for the safety school thing, I think it is possible in the Northeast to do two colleges a day, especially if one of them is a driveby to see if the kid at least likes the look of the place.</p>
<p>I do not, however, recommend trying for 3 schools in one day:).</p>
<p>One other thing: If you’re driving between Boston and Philadelphia, and not stopping at NYC, New Haven, and/or Providence en route, you shouldn’t be driving much of the way on I-95, which would likely add 1-2 hours to the trip. You go west on I-90 (Mass Pike) to Stockbridge, then I-84 west through Hartford to Danbury, then I-684 and the Saw Mill River Parkway south to the Tappan Zee Bridge, the I-87 North (west, really) to the Garden State Parkway, and only around Westfield do you get on I-95 (NJ Turnpike).</p>
<p>We call that leg of the trip, “stoppin’ by Bill and Hillary’s for a cup of coffee”.</p>
<p>The problem is that the OP has a visit to Columbia in the mix which changes the Tappen Zee into the George Washington and the Saw Mill into the Cross Bronx!</p>
<p>It would be logistically possible to do Bryn Mawr and Haverford, or one of these with Swarthmore, and probably also to do MIT and Harvard in one day, but I sure wouldn’t recommend it. In my experience with 2-a-day visits, the second college of the day always suffers. Also, to get a true feel for a college, you need time to poke around on your own. Info sessions and tours, especially in the summer, truly do homogenize in your mind after a short time. If you want to do drive-by visits, two-a-day might work, but I don’t see any colleges on your list that you’d want to just drive by.</p>
<p>As for the train/plane/car dilemma, my first recommendation would be to avoid using a car in either NYC or Boston, especially if you haven’t driven in those cities. If I were you, I would fly to Philly, rent a car, do the schools in that area, then drive to New Haven and Providence, bypassing New York for the time being. Get rid of the car in Boston, and stay near South Station, from which, as Marite points out, you can take the T to MIT and Harvard (and Tufts too if you should decide to add it to the list), as well as catch the train back to NYC. That train ride from Boston to New York can be quite re****l and pleasant – much nicer than driving – and you can use the time to catch up with your daughter about her reactions to the colleges you’ve seen. Stay in Manhattan for the final college visits, and fly from there back to Seattle.</p>
<p>All of the public transportation systems have websites where you can research routes, schedules, and prices ahead of time. And I’ve found that teenagers are often quicker at figuring out how to negotiate alternative forms of transportation than we adults are. Let your daughter help.</p>
<p>Finally, if possible, I’d recommend extending your stay on the east coast to 10 days or 2 weeks so you don’t have to rush so much and you can take the time to catch your breath and get in some R&R. I fear the fatigue factor may spoil your visits by the end of the trip.</p>
<p>Like the OP, we live far away from the NE, so out of necessity we compacted our initial tour of NE colleges. We made an initial trip the summer before junior year, and a more pared down but more intensive trip during spring break of junior year. For both trips we were able to rent a car one-way. It’s definitely possible to visit more than one college a day if they are close to each other - Harvard and MIT, for example. The key is carefully planning in advance the driving times and the schedule of the tours and info sessions - the times they are offered are on their websites. Many college don’t have tours/info sessions on weekends. Also, having all your accommodation reservations made in advance is important of course.</p>
<p>As far as NYC, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City that someone else has mentioned already, there’s relatively inexpensive parking nearby, and we took the Path train into the city - easy and convenient. In Cambridge, we stayed at the Hotel @ MIT, parked the car in a nearby garage and made our way around on foot or via subway. We looked up the garage locations in advance of our trip. So we avoided driving in both cities, but had our rental car to continue our journey. I think it’s easier to have a car, so that you can then leave when you want without having to hassle coordinating train schedules with info session and tour schedules, etc. If the rental car has a GPS as backup - that’s nice, too, if you don’t have someone good with reading directions/maps and helping with navigation.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr and Haverford are basically adjacent to one another. There’s a walking path between them – 10 minutes – and they are both quite compact. I wouldn’t recommend trying to cram both of them and Swarthmore into a single day unless you really didn’t care to do anything but look, but you can see everything there is to see at both and talk to tons of students in less time than it takes to do a thorough tour of sprawly campuses like Yale or Stanford. (Bryn Mawr is also heartwrenchingly beautiful, especially in nice weather. I recommend a visit even if you aren’t interested in it at all.)</p>