mlanders28

I am planning to visit the following colleges with my son next week. We are from Boston, flying into and out of Dulles and driving from one school to another. We have Mon-Fri and would like to spend 3 hours minimum at each college. Any advice as to the best travel route?? Whre to go first, and the last closest to Dulles airport? I'd hate to drive to one, then to another only to back-peddle to another, etc. I have never been to this area of the US. Any advice is extremely appreciated.

U of Richmond, Wake Forest in Winston-Salem
U of Virginia, Davidson College of Davidson NC,
College of William and Mary in Williansburg Va,
Washington and Lee U of Lexington VA,
Duke U.,
and
Georgetown U in DC

cmcfong

I live near Wake Forest (GO DEACS!). It is easily accessible from I-40. Duke is a straight shot East on I-40 to I-85 N headed towards the DC area. Duke is roughly 2 hours from WFU.
Davidson is just off I-77 which intersects with I-40 in Statesville.

I would suggest you do western VA first, hit NC doing Davidson to WFU to Duke then head north to the eastern VA colleges ending up in DC.

Enjoy the trip, you have some lovely campuses on your list.

williamscb13

You also need to find out what time campus tours are offered on all those colleges. Plan to spend a morning at one college then drive to the next college for the afternoon.

Cyanna

Davidson is the furthest point on your loop, so you might want to arrange the trek with that in mind: Go Dulles to UVa/Charlottesville to W&L/Lexington to Davidson. The route along 81 and 77 can be really pretty.

Then work your way back via Wake-Forest/Winston-Salem, Duke - Durham, Wm&Mary, Richmond, and Georgetown last.

Obviously you could do that exactly in reverse.

FWIW I think you're going to get COMPLETELY whipped by this trip, pretty though the campuses and the routes may be. Strongly recommend figuring out the "no matter what" preferences and then the "if we still have time and energy."

If it were me, I'd lay them out on a (paper/ink) map with the "musts" highlighted in case you want to cut out one or more of the "maybes." Added points for getting GoogleMaps to give you travel time between proximate colleges, just for planning.

And williamscb13 is absolutely right about time for tours. One way to make decisions might be to schedule tours only at the "musts," and just drive-throughs at "maybes."

BigRuss

Your request isn't easy and there will be backtracking in there, but try this (additional help welcome):

From Dulles drive to Lexington for W&L. Next backtrack north on I-81 to I-64 for UVa. [Then stop -- if he can gain admission to UVa, skip all other schools]. This is a heavy driving day, and the next morning you should enjoy breakfast at Bodo's Bagels on Route 29.

Next (this ought to be a new day), drive south on US 29 to I-40 to Weak Forest. Then drive west to I-77 and take it south to Davidson. You can do these two in a day, but it's a decent-size drive from UVa to Weak.

Next day, turn around and go north on I-85 to Durham for Duke.

Next day, take I-85 to I-95 to Richmond (or go east to W&M) and then go to W&M -- you can do these in a day. Stay in Richmond or Williamsburg overnight.

Next day, go to DC and visit Georgetown.

This schedule shorts Virginia and W&L a bit and gives extra time to (YUK) Duke -- although you can salve that wound by visiting Chapel Hill and UNC (just minutes away, and the girls are a LOT prettier than the Dukies).

And UVa is not in "Western VA," it is in Central Virginia. Western Virginia includes Blacksburg, Roanoke and people who think jugs are musical instruments.

Cyanna

cmcfong, I think I ended up saying the same thing you did. Great minds.....

Cyanna

mlanders28: You can tell which colleges invite proud and completely subjective grudges against other schools. Assume you took all that with a big grain of salt. But raises a question: you're from Boston; does your son have a clear preference for Southern schools? Or is this just one of several look-see trips?

Cyanna

Also re: comparing this area with New England: distances are much farther than you're used to. Be forewarned.

RVtraveler

Using Microsoft Streets & Trips, optizized routes it developed the following sequence:
Georgetown
U of Richmond
Col of William & Mary
Duke U
Wake Forest
Davidson
Washington & Lee
and return to Dulles

Of course this can be reversed as cmcfong stated, but if you do that check the times. You have a very tight schedule so I will detail the info that I have. In summary it will be a full five days with a start on Monday at 9am. The time estimates do NOT allow for meals, etc but do allow about 3 hours at each college. In adddition it is wise to add about 15-20% to time estimates to allow for construction, gas, rest stops, etc.

Your son is obviously an excellent student - enjoy your trip together.

Monday
Georgetown ar 9am dep 12
U of Richmond ar about 2:30 suggest you travel to W'sburg There are plenty of motels, so no reservation is required. It's a pleasant town to walk around, walk around the college. (We have two daughters who graduated from W&M, it has this father's recommendation.)

Tuesday
W&M ar 9am dep 12 and return to I-64 west to I-95 and south to Durham, NC about 5pm

Wednesday
Duke ar 9 dep 12 and go 85 miles to
Wake Forest ar 2 dep 5

Thursday
Davidson College ar 10:30 dep 2p and go 220 miles to ...

Friday
Washington & Lee ar am and depart late pm w/200 plus miles to airport.

RVtraveler

Whooops! From W&L go to UVA, about 70 miles and then return to airport!

eyemom84

We just returned from a college tour in the northeast and after 4 schools our son was DONE (we had looked at 4 the previous month). Having done this 2-3 yrs ago with our eldest son, we should have remembered the maximum-college-exposure issue.

Has he made any size decisions? If so, remember the exhaustion factor. We also took a lot of photos which helped with recalling the many schools.

I assume you already have your airline tickets since flying into Dulles and home from Charlotte would be an option. NC is a very long state - 7-9 hrs from coast to mountains so the distances are much different than New England.

Good Luck and enjoy! You are visiting some gorgeous campus and I will wish you some cooler weather next week!

gail

We looked at some of the same colleges and others in the same areas (also from Boston). You have some good advice above.

Another possibility is fly into Dulles and out of Raleigh-Durham (RDU). JetBlue and Delta have really cheap 1-way fares into RDU from Boston (often well under $100) - also into IAD.

Some advice from our similar trip - it will be hot as hell in the south at this time of year and some of these campuses are huge. After a while you will not care, since each tour starts with a nice powerpoint presentation telling you how wonderful the school is. Then they take you on a walking tour, showing you a classroom, a dorm, the library, and often for some reason known only to them - a laundry room.

Remember where you parked the car - we lost our car at George Mason Univ in some parking garage - it was a rental and neither of us remembered what it looked like. (Found it by pressing the button on the remote until a car horn sounded and the trunk opened).

However, I still remember it as an overall positive - we spent evenings together in a bunch of towns, even just watching TV - and ate 3 meals/day together which is a rarity with HS juniors.

We saw 2 colleges/day. It gave us a feel for each - and helped narrow down her preferences. You will get all sorts of advice here about how you MUST see each college while in session and how you must spend more time at each - all good advice, but the reality of most of our schedules is that just is not about to happen.

And when we got home from our 8 day trip, I said I was never looking at another college again and how she would have to do further searching on-line and visit 1 or 2 colleges after acceptances. She conned my DH to take her to see one more school - Elon in NC - and she applied binding Early Decision and is a junior there now (actually in Argentina for 6 months, but that is a whole other story)

SAnParis2

I think it is way too much, I think that your child will have to be brilliant to even be considered for a good portion of those schools, & he should be the one planning this excursion. It reminds me very much of the Bataan Death march. Oh, & appointments should be set up w/each, which may well be difficult, based on your time table.

yestravel

Avoid I95 South from DC to Richmond unless u leave at the crack of dawn.

obxgirl

Apologies for being blunt, but this plan is certifiably insane. Not only are some aspects of it physically impossible, you're going to have a kid who will be so over saturated with leafy college campuses, he won't remember a single individual thing about any of them.

Strongly suggest you break it into two trips, VA and NC. Most universities have Saturday tour sessions in the fall. Take your kid out of school on a Friday and do the NC schools in September.

VA (fly in and out of Dulles or better still Reagan National)
Day 1 Fly In, Georgetown
Day 2 Richmond, W&M
Day 3 UVA, W&L
Day 4 Fly Home

NC (fly in and out of Raleigh or better still Greensboro)
Day 1 Fly in, Wake Forest, Davidson
Day 2, Duke, Fly Home

Or better still take an extra day and add UNC Chapel Hill to the mix.

Good luck!

RaleighLaura

I agree with the Chapel Hill ideas (both on the scheduling and the girls). C'mon down!

gail

There are so many colleges in the VA/NC area that you can make yourself crazy adding "just one more" in each area. After you see schools on your list you will have seen a reasonable mix of schools and your son will have some idea if he wants large/small/rural/city - and this will help add and subtract to his list of schools to which he eventually applies.

There are no non-stop flights between Boston and Greensboro - I would stick to RDU into which there are multiple non-stop flights. For purposes of planning, American is soon going to stop flying into RDU - choices are JetBlue and Delta

Ackislander

Follow OBXgirl's advice on cutting back on the number of schools you visit. Gail is right on the choices you will ultimately have to make: rural-urban, large-small, private-state. Unlike NE, state colleges and universities have great prestige in the south (and midwest) and are as hard to get into for out of state students as Ivy League universities.

Take lots of notes and lots of pictures, because with this many schools on your schedule, you will soon find that they all blend into a blur.

MLTimes

This is an incredibly diverse list -- big/small; city/suburban; Greek/not Greek. I know this isn't a parenting board, but for a kid from New England who has probably seen a variety of campuses already, I'd seriously try to help him narrow it down by drawing comparisons to schools you already know well.

Also, you often don't get a real feel from the group meeting and official tour, so just budgeting time for that seems like a waste. I saw one suggestion of, I think it was, Georgetown and Richmond in the same day. Never gonna happen. Just wandering around campus at Georgetown won't give him any idea about what it's like actually being there and being in the city. To that point, Georgetown seems to be the outlier here. Why not take the train down for a seperate DC trip (or let him come down on the train/shuttle himself to experience what it will be like in college), and for this trip just focus on the NC and the central/southern VA schools on this swing?

Birdie

There are some good suggestions here. Whatever you decide, let us know and we can help with details. I live in Williamsburg and attended W&M so I can help with that. I can add that W&M is one hour from U of Richmond and UVA is one hour further from UofR. If you still want to drive from VA to Durham, I would take I-85 down not I-95. Also look at the AAA website if you are a member. They have a good college visit planner there.