Great thread. Schools in distance cities near airports with non-stop flights are closer than some schools that seem nearby,.
I learned a few things.
18 year olds can rent Uhauls.
Uhaul storage can be very cost effective to store stuff over the summer
MovingHelp from Uhaul was a life saver. It was like $200 to hire 2 guys to load the truck at the apartment, and unload the truck into the storage bin, and $200 on the reverse end in the Fall. No broken fingers, no dressers dropped on anybody's foot, etc.
We did an August trip in the same weekend using 3 different crews. We moved D1 from her work apartment on a Friday, met D2 on Saturday at her college and hired a different crew and truck to move her stuff from storage into her senior year apartment, then continued to new city and had the 3rd crew to unload D1s truck into her grad school apartment Monday morning. It was an easy and flawless operation.
Some used furniture is cheaper to sell than to move and buy again at the new place.
@ClassicRockerDad my girls so far have been very resourceful on both the travel and the storage of things. They both have gotten rides, shared storage units with other etc.
Carnegie Mellon was a good six hour drive. We only did it twice a year - the rest of the time Mathson flew and it was an easy trip. My only regret is that we didn’t make more time to explore Pittsburgh and we only got ourselves to Falling Water his senior year. Younger son was in Boston - we have lots of relatives nearby as well to stay with and he took the train for midyear trips. It was noticeably easier and cheaper.
My nephew discovered when looking at colleges that in many ways it was easier to get to Rice than Cornell from the DC area. (He ended up at Rice.)
And also some parents think that if a kid goes to college closer to home…the parents will see the college kid more often. Not true always.
We had one kid who went to college 2 hours and 10 minutes from our front door.
The second kid went to college 3000 miles away.
We saw the kid 3000 miles away MORE than the one closer by.
It was also easier for US to drive 35 minutes each way to the airport to pick kid 2 up…than it was driving 4 plus hours round trip in one day. We finally told that kid to take a bus.
We have to figure out what to do with all of D’s stuff while she’s studying abroad next fall. Don’t really want to pay for storage for 8 months. I guess we’ll rent a U Haul and just bring everything back home. She said she can weed through a lot of it and not take it back next spring, so that’s good!
“I learned a few things. 18 year olds can rent Uhauls.”
I learned that too, which was a surprise to me. Including the rental trucks, not just the trailers. Also learned that small trucks are not that expensive to rent one way.
Several of our long distance college apartment move-ins and move-outs were kid/dad driving the truck one way coupled with a one way plane ticket for dad. Pretty cheap and a fun time with the kid (if you like road trips).
Even once you are talking about flying distance, it can make a big difference if the school is near a major airport, or is miles from a secondary airport. We have found it is much, much easier, and even cheaper, to get to Macalester (15 minutes from the Minneapolis airport, many flights per day nonstop from San Francisco) than to Whitman (only a couple connections a day to Walla Walla, and for some reason, it’s really difficult to go Walla Walla to SF on on Sunday).
I can’t imagine paying for summer storage or a U-Haul. Have your kid find a local friend and haul a few boxes to the kids basement, thank the parents with a batch of home baked brownies and make sure and retrieve the stuff on a timely basis.
There was NOTHING (bedding, old couch, horrible arm chair) that was in my kids dorm rooms that I wanted back. The ratty arm chair from Uncle Herbert’s family room went to goodwill, ditto the old pots and pans that had belonged to Aunt Stella and had been lovely back in 1948 when she was a newlywed.
If you don’t buy your kids shiny new stuff, it will hurt less when they abandon it to Salvation Army after graduation. The clothes fit into suitcases, ditto toiletries. Ship the books via USPS and their cheap media/book rate. Laptop goes into a backpack and travels with your kid.
Don’t you think college “fit” would be a lot more important than distance from home? What happens when they want to study abroad for a semester! Sometimes you need to let your young adults leave the nest…
@socaldad2002 When my son studied abroad in London he was a direct flight back to the East Coast and travel time was about half the time it takes him to get to Grinnell. In the 3 years that he has been in Grinnell he has flown out of Baltimore and Washington transferred in Las Vegas, Tampa, St. Louis and Chicago. I have lost count of the number of flights that have been changed due to weather. And once he is in Des Moines it is another hour to campus, but that does not count the usual several hour wait for a shuttle. The longest trip to date was 23 hrs, but that involved protests, engine problems and other adventures.
With all of that said, son choose Grinnell knowing travel would be an issue, but fit out weighed travel concerns. He has had a wonderful experience, but I am telling his younger brothers that direct Southwest flights should be a factor in their college searches when the time comes.
The BEST thing about having a kid far from home was NOT having the crap at home for the college summers. We happily paid for a storage unit for three months…she shared with three friends, and I think the total cost was $75 per summer each.
@blossom pit kid was 3000 miles away. We were not renting a UHaul or schlepping stuff home in the summers. It was stored. I loved it. It wasn’t in my living room. We took her to college with four suitcases and a trip to BBB and Target.
Stuff DID accumulate over the four years she was there. We had 6 suitcases to bring it all back…and we were very clear…what didn’t fit in the suitcases was donated or given away when she graduated. It was NO problem.
OTOH…my son was only two hours away…stuff in the living room every summer…plus he took less and less with him each year when he went back to college. By the time he graduated, we could move him home…all stuff in the trunk to a Volvo. Perfect.
When he did study abroad, we did have his stuff at our house. I hate it…should,have paid for a storage unit.
This is so true! Our youngest will be going to school 5 hours away this Fall, which means 10 hours round trip. Hard to do in one day, and impossible to do without taking time off work and there are no direct flights or even buses between here and there. We’ve been spoiled with our other two being 75 minutes away. I’d honestly have her be far enough to fly. Like the OP said, we could get over and back to OHare to pick her up in significantly less time than it will take to drive up to get her. At some point she’ll have a car and have to do the driving herself, but not for the first couple of years.
@daffodilpetunia we are also in the Bay Area - oldest is at Willamette (11 hour drive or 1 1/2 hour flight plus 1 hour drive - not too bad). Middle kid is a hs sophomore and starting to look and your examples of Whitman vs Macalester are right on the money. Also thinking about Oberlin and Carleton (both less than an hour from a major airport) but just heard of a local friend’s daughter who got into Wesleyan and thinking that one is pretty inconvenient from here, I think. Or Williams… how do you even get there from here? (I mean, it’s possible, but not easy).
Also there’s Cal Poly SLO which is a 4 hour drive when the traffic isn’t awful, and there is a train, but no flights, so it’s actually quicker to get home from somewhere like Reed or Lewis and Clark than from Cal Poly.
Part of the reason my younger daughter took Whitman off her list was the time and expense of getting to and from the school. When she went to visit, the fastest she could do the trip (with the assistance of her dad, who drove the rental car from and to Seattle) was three days. She ended up at a school a four-hour drive from home.
DD1 went to school 5 hours away. Ended up in the hospital unconscious before her freshman year even began, thanks to alcohol. Three weeks later, got the call by metro police that she had ended up in another compromised situation, and dangerous, and we had to race to school to get her.
Two years later, DS1 went off to school 6 hours away. No planes or trains nearby. Could catch a bus from an hour away if he was lucky. He ended up in an auto accident and it was a nightmare rushing to get to him so far away.
For DS2, our 3rd child, we tried to establish accessibility as the only condition we cared about in his selecting a college. We were done w not being able to get there in an emergency. Otherwise, choice was all his. Fast forward to acceptances time and he got a full ride-to a school in Abu Dhabi. Had to tell him no way. He ended up at a school a short 4 hours away. No scholarship but much better on his parents’ mental health.
DD2, our number 4, is awaiting her final acceptances. She has a few internationals in there, including Morocco, and a few on the other coast. At least the ones on the other coast can be accessed by a plane ride.
Sometimes wish we hadn’t taught our kids that the world is theirs. They are not interested in going to school anywhere close to home!
Wow—some scary and unusual situations. We live in HI. Our kids both attended a U in LA which is a 5-6 hour plane ride plus getting to & from airport. It worked fine for all of us and no emergencies that caused us to race to their sides.
I attended a college in Eugene, OR and later Davis, CA and my folks lived in HI. My sibs attended colleges and/or grad/pro schools in UMass Amherst, U of MI Ann Arbor, Boston, Willamette, Palo Alto and SF. We just accepted that we would only get to visit HI in the summers and were on our own for emergencies. It worked out fine. We wrote lord of letters and had rare phone calls—long distance.
I feel folks really grow by living in a place that is very different from where they grew up. Good luck to all. Our kids are happily living their lives. S is in DC and D is in LA. We see them each at least 2 or more times/year.
If I were OP’s sister, I would have made it clear that 5 hours away/10 hour round trip means the child is not coming home for birthdays and weekends, special birthday or not. My daughter who is 2000 miles away comes home at Christmas only.
My niece who went to school in San Diego, about 1000 miles from denver, came home all the time. Often the tickets are under $100.
"DD1 went to school 5 hours away. Ended up in the hospital unconscious before her freshman year even began, thanks to alcohol. Three weeks later, got the call by metro police that she had ended up in another compromised situation, and dangerous, and we had to race to school to get her.
Two years later, DS1 went off to school 6 hours away. No planes or trains nearby. Could catch a bus from an hour away if he was lucky. He ended up in an auto accident and it was a nightmare rushing to get to him so far away.
For DS2, our 3rd child, we tried to establish accessibility as the only condition we cared about in his selecting a college."
As a parent, I totally understand and empathize. After those first two kids’ experiences, I’d be concerned about access as well. But as a younger sibling, I would have been FURIOUS at my older sister for being such a _____ (Fill in the blank with your worst sibling insult) and my older brother for getting in that accident and ruining mom and dad for me. Being the younger kid can be much easier or more difficult based on how the older ones act.