How do you afford all those college visits?

historymom
Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:12:21 +0000

I don’t know if this info is too late for the OP, but for any other parents who, like me and my H live in an area with a dearth of attractive colleges, you have to start early unless you have a big travel budget. We started summer 07 as it was the one before our DDs, Junior year.

So here is my additional advice on affording college visits:


Do regional visits as others have suggested
Join a hotel family’s “club” ie Hilton Honors. This is a good one because their family of hotels includes everything from the Hampton Inn and Suites where you can get a clean room and breakfast for under 100.00 in many cities, to super chi chi Hilton resorts. What this does for you is it allows you to build up points that you can redeem for free stays.
Plan to visit some after admissions results are in. We are looking at the CA and Pacific North West schools before applying but if either of our girls are admitted to the schools there considering in CO and TX, we will fly out to both states and probably make that one trip.


I have twins so between the two of them we will probably visit 10 to 14 campuses total before all is said and done. We have already made trips to 4 schools within a day’s drive and had one overnight.

Enjoy! and plan some fun stuff along the way. We just got home from a trip to Cal Poly which we combined with a day in Disneyland. It was a blast, just me and my girls, laughing ourselves silly and enjoying our
time together.