<p>Queen’s Mom - I feel exactly the same way - too much drama when they have boyfriends in high school. I was pretty happy they ended things when they did because they had discussed trying to stay together, and I didn’t think that was a good idea. And wow, you were young when you met your DH! I met mine when I was 20, and that was pretty young compared to when most of my friends met their Hs.</p>
<p>Momof3sons - I’d love to hear details of your trip, though I’m sure you don’t want to post them all. D’s interested in Tufts and Amherst, and possibly Brandeis - though probably not. She’s also interested in Swarthmore, as I mentioned last week. We visited Tufts last summer, and she liked it a lot. She wasn’t thinking about Amherst at that point, but her GC suggested it, so now I’d like her to check it out if we can find the time to get up there. It’s just so hard to fit these trips in around her crazy schedule. Where are you headed next?</p>
<p>DeniseC,
I can tell you that Brandeis and Tufts can be done in one day, since we just did that and felt that we had enough time at each school. We did the Brandeis information session and tour in the a.m., with the Tufts tour and info session in the p.m. We stayed for an hour or two after the formal part of the sessions ended so that we could just walk in and out of the buildings. They are about 20-25 minutes apart if you are driving.</p>
<p>LIMOMOF2, I forgot that I will be home tonight (we are going to Vassar this p.m.) and I’ll post details of our New England trip this evening when I can gather my thoughts.</p>
<p>Welcome, DeniseC. I’m planning to take my D to visit Columbia and NYU over the summer, but they’re close to home, so not a big deal. We’ve also visited Tufts and W&M, though not on the same trip. No real suggestions - sorry.</p>
<p>We live near none of the schools (California). So I am trying to map out flying into Virginia driving and flying out of the northeast. I used to live in Mass., so I am familiar with some of these schools and the driving and the unpredictable weather in April.</p>
<p>William and Mary seems so attractive on paper, I am trying to decide (today if possible) if it is worth all the extra travel. But if not now, when, right?</p>
<p>I’ve also learned that there are days in April, right smack in the middle of my trip, where some schools having “admitted student” days. So no tours or info sessions for juniors on those days. Watch out for those in your planning.</p>
<p>I am thinking of dropping Emory from our visits this April. D is not very excited about it and it is a reach. There are so many other things I would rather be doing.</p>
<p>Well, it may be a small consolation, but at least your S can get over two hurts at the same time rather than consecutively. Time for some TLC at home, it seems.</p>
<p>What were your general impressions of Brandeis and Tufts? We’ll probably visit one in the afternoon and the other in the morning and if we have time see Clark on the way back to NY. Tufts is a super reach, so I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but I think it’s typical of what’s he’s looking for. Access to a city, but not necessarily right in it. (He thinks Columbia is too urban for example). Not too big, not too small, not too Greek, sports not important, good academics.</p>
<p>Just dropping in from the 09 thread with a little unsolicited advice:</p>
<p>You’ve heard it a million times, but please make your kids work on essays, etc. over the summer and apply nonbinding early action/rolling decision as much as possible. There are parents/kids in the class of 09 just now getting their first acceptances, waiting for a ton more, with the final decision to be made by May 1st. That is way too much stress and decision-making to compress into one month. Son was admitted to all of his schools by December, cut the list in half by the end of the year, then I made him apply for smaller school scholarships in Jan and Feb. He still hasn’t made a decision, but at least things aren’t as hectic and stressful for us as for others. I know that EA is not avaialble everywhere, but having some of those under your belt is sure a stress reducer.</p>
<p>missypie, thanks for the reminder. I have been following the '09 thread periodically, and what some of you are going through is beyond nerve-racking. I will print out your post for S and refer to it often over the summer!</p>
<p>I have been to Tufts and Brandeis, but am planning on taking my younger kid to both soon. </p>
<p>I like Tufts a lot, it is a big reach here too. None of my older kids wanted to apply. I can’t say what they didn’t like about it. One of our visits was on a holiday weekend and the campus was dead. That didn’t help, but on a return weekday visit, it was bustling. The location is not urban but walkable to Somerville and the T. Maybe my kids were looking for more urban.</p>
<p>Brandeis’s location doesn’t thrill me. It seems more difficult to get to Boston than it should be.</p>
<p>We all really like Clark as a school but find it difficult to get past Worcester. Not fair perhaps.</p>
<p>Denise, if it were me I’d fly into either NYC or Boston, rent a car, and work my way south or north as the case may be, then fly home via the other city. I’d leave W&M out of it unless your child is passionately interested in the place or you really don’t mind lots and lots of driving. </p>
<p>That said, I really like the college. I’ve been to W&M a number of times, as three generations of women in my stepmother’s family have gone there, and my niece was married in the Wren Chapel. I posted about W&M earlier in this thread:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Getting there is always a royal pain, however. Flying, the closest airport is Norfolk, and you still have to drive an hour+ to get to the campus. And if you start there, the trip to NYC would take you at least 7 hours, and maybe more depending on traffic. If you did decide to do this, are there any schools in the DC/Baltimore/Philadelphia area you could visit on the way?</p>
<p>Excellent advice. With my older son, it was great to have the first admission back in October. </p>
<p>With DD (the 2010), who does not have the complications of athletics, we were discussing strategy yesterday after school and we came up with a plan of applying ASAP to her first choice safety and top couple of matches and hopefully hearing back before any of the other apps are even due. </p>
<p>If she gets in to the safety (which she should assuming it really is a safety), then she can ignore her other safeties and “move up the ladder”. Similarly, get into any of her top matches and she can ignore the other matches and aim only at the reaches with the later in the year applications.</p>
<p>If I were looking at those schools I’d probably try to fly into DC on an open-jaw ticket with a Boston or Providence return, rent a car there & drive down to W & M (about a 2-1/2 hr drive), return the car in DC and take Amtrak to NY, Providence, and Boston, though you’ll probably need a car in Boston again to get to Tufts, Brandeis, and Clark. You really don’t want a car in NYC; far more trouble than it’s worth. And driving up the I-95 corridor can be hellish. Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor is pretty fast, direct, efficient, and hassle-free.</p>
<p>There’s generally more frequent and cheaper air service into DC than either Norfolk or Richmond, the two closest airports to Williamsburg, and it’s probably easier to get an open-jaw into DC. Another possibility is to fly Southwest into BWI (roughly halfway between DC and Baltimore), return from Providence. I’ve gotten great Southwest fares into & out of those cities, and Southwest doesn’t charge higher prices for non-r/t tickets. If you’re doing that you might want to rent a car in Providence; it’s only a 45-minute drive from there to Boston (depending on traffic), an hour or so Providence-Worcester, so it would be easy to do a quick round-the-horn tour of Brown, Tufts, Brandeis, and Clark. Another advantage of flying into BWI and renting a car there is that BWI is right on the main Amtrak corridor so if you return the car there you can just hop on a train to NYC. without a lot of complicated transfers.</p>
<p>Amtrak offers special fares for HS kids doing college tours—the adult pays full fare, the HS junior or senior gets 50% off.</p>