@Kona2012 Yes! I’d love to hear your thoughts on Muhlenberg too.
We have 4 initial college visits left barring a surprise entrant in the sweepstakes emerging in the next few months.
In theory we could do all 4 in a single week, but I think my husband’s capacity to care about college tours would be severely taxed and I actually want to see something other than colleges on this tour. So I’m thinking of taking a day or days midweek in late June/mid July and driving up to the closest one, Drew. It’s 3 hours away according to the navigator app.
If you want to give a college a fair shot, what is the tipping point between “drive up the evening before and book a hotel” and “drive up in the morning, do a tour, and drive back in the evening”? The furthest away I’ve gone on a 1 day trip is 2 hours. I felt good with that and the colleges at that distance still show well. I was tired at the end of the day but the kid was not.
How long a trip, for you guys, is ‘get a hotel and stay the night’ range?
3 hours would probably cause me to consider a hotel. 4 hours definitely calls for an overnight. Our first visit was maybe 2.5-3 hours away but the tour/visit was from 8:45-3:00 so a hotel was nice the night before. So it also depends on what time the tour can happen.
3 Hours is the limit for us and we did a few in that range. It was OK, but I was pretty drained by the time we finally got home. Please report back on how you like Drew!
I would agree that 3 hours is about the limit before arranging a hotel.
I will definitely report back about Lafayette and Muhlenberg. Muhlenberg will be informal since there are no Saturday tours.
Definitely depends on the time of the tour. We drove 4 hours to one, but the tour was from 11 - 1. We left around 5:30 AM and drove home right after. Not ideal - probably would’ve been better to stay overnight, but with the dogs that becomes a big hassle with boarding, etc. It was still S19’s favorite of the in-state schools.
We will definitely be getting the meningitis shot. A friend’s daughter is a freshman at Bucknell this year and around Christmas break there was an outbreak of meningitis B there this year – the college never made any sort of general announcement and she only knew about it because one of her close friends was hospitalized and almost died. Because she had been vaccinated, she did not have to receive the preventative treatment that others in her circle of friends did. And again, no announcement was ever sent out to the parents or the other students in the school (perhaps because it took the school a while to figure it out as most of the affected kids actually got sick while at home on Christmas break) . Anyhow, I suspect outbreaks like this are more common than people realize and for that reason, I definitely think vaccination is the way to go.
@zozoty Does the meningitis shot need to be repeated every year? Anyone else know?
I don’t think so. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mening/index.html
So most/all would already have the conjugate. It’s the B that isn’t mandatory that we should ask about before these kids go to college. If I am understanding the discussion.
My oldest D14 graduates from college next weekend. The way we organized her college tours was by turning it into a vacation, where we alternated between college visits and fun excursions. It was somewhat easy for us since both my husband and I work for schools in the same district. I’m still figuring out the logistics for my S19. We’d like to visit some schools in GA, AL, and LA. But, he has a lot of football camps/trainings this summer and will be volunteering at a camp for little ones with Type1 diabetes. My husband and I will be going on a week long vacation in July. And I may be chosen to teach STEM classes this summer. Then fall football/band practice begins in the summer. Sigh…I just don’t know that we have the time! Not to mention fitting in SAT studying if he has to take it again and scholarship essays! It’s a lot.
I feel like going on a pointless rant about how so many of the best liberal arts colleges are in tiny towns or otherwise way off the beaten path…! Last night I was literally thumbing through the Fiske Guide just for the purpose of looking up where LACs are. After visiting schools last weekend, D really gained some peaceful clarity that she wants that small college model. So last night I kept being disappointed to discover that schools of possible interest are also relatively hard to travel to. A friend had suggested Kenyon last weekend and I looked it up…tiny town of 600 outside Columbus. Sigh. Dickinson seems like a possible fit…outside Harrisburg. Sigh again. Mount Holyoke could be perfect…out in western Massachusetts. I wish D were a better fit for Reed, since it’s at least in our time zone and is in an actual city. Pointless rant…it’s just funny how the LACs all seem to have been founded by people who somehow ended up in the wilderness, basically. Makes planning college visits for this summer an interesting challenge…
@Anxious711 My D always bought ‘real’ clothes for prom and the dresses were taken to college and have been well used for dress up occasions. Regarding dresses, I’d research prom at her school, but at our local high schools wearing pants and nice shirt would be totally fine. In fact at my kids’ HS few girls would wear a “prom” dress. Obviously, your D’s HS might be different.
@SDCounty3Mom I hear you about the LAC locations but I think that’s part of the charm - the whole bubble aspect of it. It’s just hard to visit as a prospective student because each visit is practically its own trip. Once you’re a student there, most schools make it easy for kids to get to the airport to get home with shuttles or ride sharing. I’ve done a fair bit of research and that seems to be the case. The big question is whether to visit before applying since each trip can cost a pretty penny.
D is drawn to LAC’s and it does make visits hard. We have visited three within 3 hours driving distance of home, which has been great driving practice for D19. All three separate trips, though. @homerdog, the bubble aspect of LAC’s has totally charmed me. What lovely places to spend four years . . . It makes me wish DH and I were college professors 
Is anyone’s kid taking the SAT this Saturday? I’m trying not to hold my breath. People may remember that my daughter was supposed to take it in March but had an anxiety attack when she realized how much people study, and just couldn’t do it. She has been working her way though test prep ever since, especially over spring break, and I think she feels much more confident now. But, we have to find ways to keep the tension low in our house leading up to Saturday!
@homerdog The meningitis B vaccine is composed of a series of 2 (or 3 depending on brand) shots. It currently is a one time only series–so not repeated yearly.
My DS16 had the 3 shot series before started school and my DD19 will as well. DS (who is at Ohio University) has already seen 2 incidents of meningitis during his time there.
Not taking the SAT this weekend since D has AP exams next week. She did just register for the June 2 one, hoping that will be the last one. Trying to encourage/will her to put in a lot of prep over the next month so she can use the summer to focus on starting essays and apps. I fear she may be a bit burned out right now so the prep may suffer.
Just set up the almost-only college tour D19 will be going on: St Mary’s in San Antonio.
(Almost-only because D19 was the videographer for D17’s college tour mega-trip a couple years back, and as part of that D19 discovered that she’s not nearly as picky about the “feel” of where she goes to college as D17 was, so less need to tour places, you know?)
D19’s interested in industrial/systems/manufacturing engineering, so most of the schools on her medium-to-shortlist are Big State Schools™, but St Mary’s has remained as a bit of an outlier, since it’s kind of a LAC-plus and smallish. (Not to mention very, very Catholic. We’re not Catholic, but she doesn’t mind that part of it at all, and actually likes the parts of Catholic philosophy they seem to foreground.) It’s close to extended family, though—part of why she can tour, since she’ll be flying down with her older sister to visit—and they have bot a smallish but longstanding industrial engineering program and a gen-ed curriculum that she really, really likes (what can I say, she’s the child of an academic, and so looks at parts of schools’ websites very few potential applicants ever do). Also, it’s not a hyperselective school, and so there’s solid merit aid in the offing, which let’s be honest is a nice plus. But really, it’s so radically different than anything else she’s looking at that this one seemed worth taking an in-person look at. So y’all’ll get a second-hand report sometime next month…
@3SailAway s19 taking the History SAT 2 on Sat. Totally scrambling this week to study. Thought APUSH would have covered most of it but he’s been looking through SAT-type questions and they are more specific and fact based so he’s trying to do what he can this week to add that one top of an already very busy homework week.
When S19 took the SAT, he was nervous too. I told him to just keep repeating “calm and focused” and to take deep breaths if he starting feeling anxious. He also focused on one question at a time and used his pencil a lot to mark up the booklet. Said it kept him on task. Good luck to your D!
@SDCounty3Mom are you looking only at selective schools? Are catholic schools out of the question? There are likely lots of small ones and some are in more urban areas. In NY, LeMoyne is in Syracuse, Nazareth and St. John Fisher (Naz isn’t Catholic though, I don’t think) are in Rochester and Canisius and Niagara are in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls area.
I imagine there are plenty like these all over, but they aren’t high ranking schools.
My d isn’t taking anything this weekend, she’s now devoting the next couple weekends to AP prep and wisely knew she would have a meltdown if she had to take an SAT as well. She is signing up for June SAT subject tests though.