<p>Just wanted to say CONGRATS!! to all of you who are drwing close to the end of Jr year (or you lucky ducks who are already there) It was a huge relief for my kids and for me to have that behind them. Take the time to celebrate their efforts which, if they took AP Bio or one ro more of the other INTENSE classes, honest to goodness may have been more difficult then the avg. college load.</p>
<p>Cheers!!!</p>
<p>So ā¦ might as well find out on THIS thread. Senior Member status at 1,000 or more than 1,000 posts?</p>
<p>Hereās a question fot east coasters that may be six of one and a half dozen of the other, but Iāll ask anyway. If one were to fly from Seattle to the east coast and were intending to visit UPenn (Philly) and Brown (Providence) would it make more sense to fly in to Philly or Boston? </p>
<p>Iām pretty much resigned to the fact that to make this efficient, weāll need to rent a car. H figures six hours drive time from Philly to Providence. Iām thinking a day at each place to do the tour and check out the city a bit, although we may have to extend for Brown if weāre including Providence and Boston.</p>
<p>Iāve never been to Philly before, and to Logan ages ago. Also, for point of reference, what times do rush hours generally run in that region?</p>
<p>Congrats, old lady. I mean, senior member! ;)</p>
<p>FAP, I donāt know about Philly, but we visited Brown from our base at a hotel in Cambridge (next to MIT). It was surprisingly easy. </p>
<p>Since weāre on the subject, our visit to Brown was in the summer, and the campus was really really quiet. There were no club posters or flyers on bulletins boards or kiosksāso my daughter crossed it off her list. Our timing was bad, I think.</p>
<p>Congrats on senior member, FAP. Donāt worry, there are lots of high school CC-elderly too, so the youth must wear off onto the label. :D</p>
<p>QM, I think it depends a little on how many data points there are. Itās possible that every data point below your child is URM, legacy or athlete, or that they are older data, still thereās room for optimism. I figured my sonās chances at Harvard were 50/50 which seems ludicrous, but in fact he did get accepted - and our naviance data showed he had a much better chance there, than at the other schools of the same caliber. Who knows why, but apparently Harvard has a bit of a soft spot for our school. Iāve been cautioned that American and a couple of other schools that look like safeties for S2 may not be as safe as they look via the naviance data. So Iām going to add at least one safer school, but Iām optimist. Iām thinking of it as a match with better than even chances.</p>
<p>FAPāYou might want to check the difference in airfare and car rental if you fly into Philly / out of Boston (or the other way around). If there isnāt a large penalty, that would save you a six hour drive at minimum. Youāre bound to hit traffic someplace between Philadelphia and Providence.</p>
<p>Philly traffic gets heavy along I95 from 4:00 pm - 6:30 pm, but can start earlier on a Friday (the shore exodus) or be heavier if the Phillies are in town.</p>
<p>Iād call Naviance-safe schools low matches, especially if the āsafeā SAT score is lower than 75th percentile. GPAs may be extra-rigorous, but SAT scores are standardized.</p>
<p>FAPāwhat about flying into Providence? Some airline does, Iām sure. Ditto on the one-way car rentalā¦worth checking out.</p>
<p>Weāre celebrating surviving hereāmade it through the kitchen re-do without disrupting sonās schedule or food needs! Thereās never a good time for something like that but I suppose we could have waited another year until he was out of the house. </p>
<p>Can it beāonly 3 more days of school, then exams? Of which S only has one anyway. How does that variable time thing work? Itās slow, then suddenly speeds up!</p>
<p>FindAPlace, we did somewhat the same trip last summer. We flew into Philly, saw Swarthmore & UPenn, and then did the entire rest of trip via traināvery convenient and quick. (However, we did stops at Princeton, Columbia, and Yale before Providence). After Brown we did Harvard, MIT and New England School of Music. We flew out of Boston. We had a great time, didnāt have to worry about driving and dealing with traffic, and had pretty much a problem-free trip the whole way. BTW at Brown we stayed at the Inn right on campus (located in a college dorm). Inexpensive and puts you right in the heart of things.</p>
<p>How many schools would you limit a college road trip to?</p>
<p>We are leave 6/9 to drive north from S. FL to end up in CT on 6/18. Will then look at Boston area schools. I just cannot decide how many schools we should stop at. She does not have any favorites, except wants to major in math, wants a good math dept. We visited 3 during spring break, which served to help her start to see what she wants and likes and what could be ruled a deal breaker. She is not Ivy material, has low CR scores and high M scores on SAT. She does not want a pressure cooker either. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>O Wise o_d Senior Member FAP,</p>
<p>I was going to suggest the train also, although I donāt have direct experience. Also Providence airport (Southwest does Providence and Philly) and the possibilities of different airports on each side (which you wouldnāt upcharge on SW). See if he will add a few other schools in as you are coming so far, or even just some fun in tourist stuff in Philly or Boston or the northeast in general.</p>
<p>WhilrdPeas, since you are driving can you play it by ear? Or do you want to have interviews or lodging booked ahead of time? I would take your cue from her if possible and be willing to skip out early from places where she isnāt interested or stay an extra day at a good spot to rejuvenate. If possible.</p>
<p>Agree on schools with similar stats to the outside world having very different data in our naviance. We can tell school which donāt seem to have a great track record and factor that into our predictions. But then again, I think our school is dissimilar enough to the publics in the area that we put a greater weight on naviance anyway.</p>
<p>I am having Naviance jealousy again!!!</p>
<p>Yes, do skip out on schools that your child isnāt interested in-donāt feel obligated to stay for any info sessions etc if your child doesnāt like the school & the way it feels. You are the buyer and or consumer or ātire kicker.ā Just leave-happened when a daughter didnāt like Ithaca College & had signed up for an Open House-she & H left & then went off to visit Howe Caverns on their way home. Funny, she ended up a geology major!</p>
<p>Good suggestions. If she feels in control of the visits, even if she is not as involved in the itinerary, it will be a much better experience. I love playing things by ear, but I have to start with a solid itinerary to throw out the window.</p>
<p>FAP, as an Amtrak aficionado, I agree with the suggestions to fly into Philly and take the train. Traffic in the northeast can be horrendous and the train, while not always on time, is pretty reliable here. Itās not cheap, but itās a lot less wear and tear on your psyche than doing the drive, particularly if youāre going to Boston. Driving in that town is not for the faint of heart!</p>
<p>Thanks for the trip advice, everyone. I hope to find some time to fit in some sightseeing in Philly/Boston/Providence. Weāll see after part one of the trip is planned (seeing family in Seattle) and the visit to NU in Chicagoland also includes a family stop to see sister in law, whoās son share my birthday.</p>
<p>I remember visits to the Boston area while my H to be was in grad school at MIT and concur that driving on the ācow paths turned into thoroughfaresā is not for the faint of heart. The subways were a breeze, though. When I was without car in Albany, NY, I used to take the Greyhound to Boston and the subway from there.</p>
<p>Wow, weāre almost back to page 3!!</p>
<p>Okay, hereās a slight variation to my fixation on SAT scores. As we know, many schools publish the 25-75% range for the scores in their Common Data Sets. We also know that typically, in building a reasonable college list, weāll be working with numbers that are a year old (meaning not for the class of 2009.) Perhaps they donāt vary much from one year to the next, EXCEPT ā¦</p>
<p>EXCEPT, as I just realized, the class of 2010 will be the first class that can really put score choice to good use. Logic suggests this will cause the SAT range to rise, right? But by how much, and will it rise more at the lower, middle or higher end (for arguments sake, letās set those at, oh, 1500-1800, 1801-2100, 2101-2400.</p>
<p>Score choice would not matter because the colleges report superscored stats anyway.</p>
<p>Went to a Penn State presentation last night. Another lovely school that my darling turned her snout up at. But I digress. They donāt superscore and do use weighted GPA as presented by the high school.</p>