My daughter’s second and third choice schools all require air travel, and one is a good hour from the airport. Both are in places that get considerable snow. I’m more than willing to send her wherever she gets accepted and wants to go, but I do worry about the hassle of shipping belongings, her inexperience with flying solo (she’s never done it!), and the possibility of her not being able to make it home for some breaks due to weather or even because the break us too short to justify all the travel.
I’d love to hear how your experience has been with your own children if you’d like to share!
Our oldest went to school 2,500 miles away, but he was at the school where my dad is a professor, so it worked out OK. He fell ill, however, and had to return after one year.
Our middle child is at the American University of Beirut - yes, in Lebanon. We know it’s where he’s supposed to be, so we’re happy he’s doing well. We are paying for tuition and housing, but he has to pay for air travel and other expenses related to international study (such as student visas).
Our youngest is a freshman at a school about an 8-hour drive away. The school’s fall break is ending today. It was only four days off, so she didn’t want to get a ride all the way home for such a short visit. She was going to stay on campus, but fortunately she was asked to go to a new friend’s home a couple of hours away. She’ll come home at Thanksgiving. We are planning on keeping her stuff in a storage unit over the summers.
My philosophy is to try to get each kid in a school that’s a good fit, and we’ll make the details work. But yes, I wish my oldest had been closer to home when he had his mental break.
Second child went cross the country for college. She understood that we would pay for plane tickets home for Christmas break and summer only (although we did fly her home for some family social occasions in addition). Her college was close to one of her aunt’s house…and she went there every thanksgiving. It was special for them to have this time together for four years. Spring breaks…her college had service trips, and she did a couple of them. The other years, she went home with friends.
Move in…two of us flew Southwest…so we had four total suitcases, and each of us had a carry on bag and a personal item. We ordered bulky things from BBB and picked them up near the college. We also made a Target run for toiletries and the like. We didn’t ship anything.
It was great for her. Sure, we missed her on some holidays…but we also saw her on some too.
DS attended college 2000 miles/2 flights away, connecting through MSP. Now grad school, same story. DD is >1000 miles/2 flights, also connecting through MSP.
DS came home for 1st thanksgiving then not after. DD will not be coming for Thxgiving. Week long spring break was hit and miss.
Only issue was that we often could not make Christmas reservations until sometime in Sept/Oct and by that time, the flights were pricy. We used FF miles (love Delta Skymiles with AmEx) for that which worked out well ($600 tickets could be had for 25,000mi for example). We try to have a longer layover so that even if the first flight is late, they’ll still make the second one. I don’t mind having kids hanging at airport for 2-3+ hours as it’s safe and there is food. Avoid last flight of the day also if feasible. Haven’t had one get stranded overnight yet but expect that’ll happen sometime.
My oldest DD is just finishing college that is 1500 miles away from home in Pittsburgh. There has been holidays, such as Thanksgiving, that she did not make it home. Fortunately, she had local roommates that would take her home with them. We always tried to book her travel for winter break thru Atlanta or Dallas vs Chicago. We also pay for year round housing so she does not have to move in and out over the summer break even if she is not there.
It has been a very good experience for her. She was sheltered before she left - never had flown by herself. She has matured greatly over the last 3 years. She is a seasoned traveler now, she takes care of her own problems, she takes care of herself. She is coming back to her hometown after graduation, already has a job lined up and is looking forward to being on her own.
The extra expense and worry of her being so far away was worth it!
Our son attends college 1800 miles away in Colorado. He’s a senior. We’ve had no issues. We were just out there for a visit this past weekend. Best choice of college for him. We’re extremely happy too.
D was 1200 miles from us and 45 minutes from the nearest airport. She had not flown by herself until her senior year of HS but managed to cope with the occasional travel glitches. Ditto on choosing flights earlier in the day and connecting through warm weather cities in the winter. We got the university calendar from the school website and did not wait to book tickets until she knew her class/exam schedule; sometimes she felt like the last person left on campus
Really, flying solo is something most 17-18 year olds can handle. I had never flown solo before I went to college. And I’d only flown twice prior to college.
My first solo flight home was kind of a disaster. Missed flight, cancelled flight, hours in the airport. But I got home fine (although late). And this was before cell phones, so I had to make all the required calls from pay phones. Heck, with today’s technology I probably coukd have an Uber waiting for me at the train station and not even miss that first flight.
My older went to college in her dad’s state, at only 1 hour from his place, but on the opposite coast from me. She is a minimalist so didn’t bring too many clothes with her-I think one or two suitcases worth-and we bought everything in that state, or they were things her dad was giving up, like extra towels, etc. She kept her stuff with him when school was out of session. She alternated vacation visits between her dad and I, just as she had always done.
My younger D is at a college across the country. Dad, D and I each brought the one checked bag you get with an Alaska Airlines CC, and we paid extra for one more. These were clothes, shoes, and a few home goods. We compacted everything possible into Space Bags or a copycat version, and used Tote a Ton nylon luggage as recommended here on CC. We’d made a list of what we’d buy on location and mapped out the stores were’d need to go to to get it all (fortunately there is a Target, Walmart, Big Lots and several other useful stores all within a short drive). We got most of it in one day.
The decision to go away for school was based on only a single trip home-at the winter break, but D’s roommate brought her home for fall break, and she was gifted with the funds for a Thanksgiving trip home. We have enough FF miles for a free spring trip home, if she wants it. I will probably pick her up at the end of the year to facilitate storage and use the free checked bag-but we get one RT for just over $100 a year with our CC so it won’t be painful. There is a storage place walking distance from her school we plan to use.
D has flown alone before and without us but with a group. Alaska has direct flights, so no connections needed.
Overall, it’s been pretty painless, and D even turned down my offer to fly out for her birthday. My older one was not as happy and came back to Seattle after a year.
Our son is in college on the other coast, in a remote town in the snow belt. After flying across the country he then has to take a 2-3 hour bus ride to campus. He’s only a sophomore so we don’t have long-term experience with it, but so far so good in terms of him being able to come home when he wants. We figure it’s mostly on him, that is he chose to go there and he knew the grueling travel it would take, and he is the one who has to deal with it. But on the other hand, it’s only a few times per year. The moving in process was a challenge, I won’t lie, but after doing it once with him we then put most of his things in storage over the summer so for sophomore year he unpacked himself after his stuff was delivered to his dorm. I should also say that we don’t have any friends or relatives in that area, but on the other hand if he couldn’t come home for one holiday or another, he could take a bus down to where we do have family.
The problem, as I see it, is the possibility of being stranded at college because of inclement weather after the dorms close for Winter Break. (At most schools that draw from a national population, the dorms do not close for the shorter breaks, so this is a once-a-year concern.)
If the bad weather is in the college community, the college will probably make some arrangements to ensure the safety of students who have to wait an extra day or two to travel. But if the bad weather is where you live or at some intermediate transfer point, your kid could have nowhere safe to go. Many motels will not rent rooms to people under 21, and it isn’t reasonable to expect a college in one part of the country to make special arrangements for a student who is stranded because of a snowstorm in another part of the country.
My daughter went to college a 7-hour bus ride from home, and I was very worried about this possibility until she moved off-campus as a junior. We never had an adequate plan for what she would do if she was stranded at college with the dorms closed because of a snowstorm at home.
I wonder how other, better prepared families handle this situation.
From Arizona-oldest son is studying in New Orleans, second son just started in Oregon. I learned how to be away from home and how to travel while in the military. Much prefer the away to college method for them. Seriously, no issues. I’m very proud of how and what they’ve learned and experienced on their own and how they will use it for the rest of their lives.
Our D is only a five-hour drive away, but we get snow and sometimes tornados, and at that distance, there could even be storms in the middle and not on either end. We just made sure she was in a dorm that remained open over breaks and a week or so into summer break (international students were housed in this dorm, as well as American students). She also had a plan of where to stay in case she was caught on the road, and of course we all watched the weather closely.
That doesn’t necessarily help if you’re worried about getting to the airport from the school in bad weather, though.
We live in Oregon and our son goes to Pitt. Like @thumper1 we used suitcases to carry many items and bed bath and beyond & target to buy things once we were there (well, we ordered items at bed bath and beyond in advance and picked up there.)
We flew out for parents weekend, bringing cold weather gear with us. He will fly home for thanksgiving and Christmas and maybe for spring break.
We made sure he signed up for an uber account and he knows how to use it if necessary.
Out of 9 years of son 1 and 2 being 3 airports away with O’Hare being the midpoint and it’s own mess and a 4 hr. bus ride from a big airport if they had had problems at the regional airport only one Christmas did one of them not make it home. It’s just a risk you take and I would think what happened to this son would be rare. The flying “solo” is no big deal and they learn pretty quickly the ins and outs of the airports they have to fly through just as any adult would. We sent everything out once and the boys rented store and locks the one summer they came home between freshman and sophomore year. We did not fly the kids home for the short breaks (Thanksgiving, Easter) and they always had something fun planned for spring break so did not come home then.
We’re in MA and our son is at Oberlin. We have driven him to and from school at the beginning and end of the year (13 hour drive, which we do in two days each way.)
He flies from Cleveland to Boston for all of his breaks. The first time he did this, we booked a flight on Spirit Airlines for his October break, which is an entire week. This was his very first time flying solo. His flight was delayed, delayed again, and delayed again so that Spirit put him up in a hotel in Cleveland. The next day, they brought him back to the airport and delayed his flight multiple times before cancelling it altogether. We hastily got him on the last Jet Blue flight out that evening and have used them ever since.
He did fine with the hassle and had a great story to tell. While it was unfolding, he posted the whole saga on Facebook. It was a great learning experience.
He’s a sophomore now and we are moving to Maine in December, so his trip will get a lot more complicated. We’ve asked him to take advantage of a great storage service offered by a local vendor to keep his stuff over the summer so that we don’t have to drive out there again in May.
One of mine went 1,000 miles away and the other 2,000 miles. You are accurate in describing some of the hassles. It was worth it for us, both found a very good fit and grew in ways that I suspect they would not have closer to home.
I honestly don’t understand when people say kids grow in ways farther from home. If they are close but on their own, (living at the school, don’t come home for laundry, that kind of thing) what are the differences in growth? I just think it is more the individual student than the situation. I know a kid that went across the country for college but still wasn’t comfortable catching an uber home from the airport, and kids an hour from home that have no problem studying abroad. A student may experience a different part of our country, but do they really grow better/different? How?
The BEST thing about having a kid far away…in the summer, they store their stuff at the college town. They don’t bring it all home! No schlepping stuff home only to schlep it back…and have it in the living room all summer. DD rented a storage unit with three others. They packed the stuff, and stored it. Kid flew home with a suitcase checked…and carried a computer and Instriment case on the plane. Perfect!
