Originally Posted by Jakebeth
Frankly, if you're trying to achieve a truly good/reasonable commute, I would draw a circle roughly 4-5 miles around Des Plaines and discount anything around it.
Given the schools constraint, you can pretty much kill anything in that circle south of Higgins Road. Rosemont, that little corner of Chicago, Schiller Park, and Bensenville are not scholastic strongholds.
Elmhurst is workable even though it's more like 7-9 miles; I rented there for several years (hence my FT name). If you said you only had $500k to spend, I'd point you there. But if you can get up over $700k, I think the Glenview schools are better than the Elmhurst schools.