Originally Posted by
AMflier
Good Luck!
Having spent last year doing the same with my oldest, here's my 2 cents:
Depending on the other schools you are seeing, I would go for the car rental, however plan on losing the car if you are going into NYC.
As for Flights, check the prices for flights and rental cars flying into PHL and out of EWR vs round trip to EWR. Newark isn't that far from Phila.
We would plant the car in a major city, PHL, BOS, then take public transportation between the various schools in the central area. The car was for hops out to the schools in the 'burbs or further.
No more than 2 schools per day, if driving is involved. It's possible to do 3 if they are clustered in a city, but I wouldn't.
Go to schools of varying sizes: Penn and Princeton are nice, but contrast it with a Haverford, or a Bard.
Go to at least one safety school (you can do that closer to home)
If you can go on a specialized departmental or college tour, it makes the visit much more informative. You will need to set these up in advance.
Don't just take generic tours.
We very much appreciate the collective wisdom in this thread. The responses have been very helpful. I'm in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment as my oldest is away on a trip, and though we're pretty solid on the school choices-- U Penn, Princeton, West Point-- the deal was, he gets two or three picks, and I get two, maybe three, depending on how everything comes together. So U Penn and West Point were my picks, Princeton and MIT were his, but we can't swing MIT because they are on break when we want to visit. So now we're considering alternatives that work with his interests (engineering).
I'm thinking that seeing just one campus each day is reasonable; were you doing more than that?
I'm hoping to burn some AA miles in at least one direction, but it looks like at least one direction will be paid, and maybe any hops from EWR to BOS or BWI. But I want him to do some of the due diligence/searching for availability, if only to learn about it for future reference.