Hello - my son wants to look at villanova, west point, navy/annapolis and possibly princeton. What would be a best home base for this...philadelphia? We will be seeing the three or four schools over a 4 day period and will obviously have a rental car. my first thought is to fly in and out of philadelphia but we could also fly into newark and out of philly. anyone ever done something like this?? thx

You won't really have a "base" as you'll be travelling every day and likely won't stay at the same hotel twice.

The main airports you can use also include BWI, in addition to PHL and EWR. For the least driving, you can use BWI/EWR or EWR/BWI. But you may have to pay a one-way drop-off fee for your car, and your flight may or may not cost more.

If you're flying in and out of the same airport, then you'll drive the same distance regardless. Southwest Airlines serve BWI and PHL, but not EWR - but Southwest doesn't always have the lowest fare.

Forget to add. There's also the Stewart Airport at Newburg (SWF) to use, which should be the closest to West Point, and you don't need to backtrack to EWR.

It's served by USAir, AA and NW. Probably on regional jets only.

My suggestion would be to try to stay overnight at each school, if you can. Some schools offer help in locating housing (in dorms, perhaps), which will give a better feel for the school than just a quick visit. Plus, this way you can spend more time at the schools and less time in the car.

If you are able to work this out, I would start at West Point and work your way down, flying in one airport and out of another as you suggested.

Best of luck!

Thanks - our first idea was to fly into Philly in the morning and see villanova that afternoon; up early and drive to westpoint for the day, back to philly and out the next day to annapolis. what I don't know is if the mapquest driving times are even close to accurate - they list around 3 hours each way to west point from PHL and around 90 minutes each way to annapolis. coming from the plains states, a 3 hour drive is not a biggie. heck, we drive that for a high school football game!

In my experience, Mapquest driving times seem to be based on the posted speed limits, rather than the realities of driving in traffic, especially during rush hours in urban areas. In particular, 90 minutes for Philly-to-Annapolis sounds extremely optimistic, I would think it would be well over 2 hours.

I agree with the above recommendations: if the airfare and car rentals aren't prohibitive, make this a north-to-south (or south-to-north) trip rather than using one base and driving long distances round-trip every day.

If you are in a Southwest Airline city, consider a one way trip between Albany (or Hartford) and Baltimore.

I think you should spend a night at each school. Spend your time at the schools, not driving back and forth to Philadelphia. On college trips, you want to get a feel for what it would be like to live there. You don't want your trip to be a tour of mid-Atlantic interstates. Driving around the East Coast is different from driving around the plains states. You will encounter far more traffic. Downtown Phila. to Villanova is easily 30 minutes. Sitting in traffic in Philadelphia isn't going to give your son any indication of what it would be like on a college campus. Travel from West Point to Annapolis, or vice versa using the Newark and Baltimore airports.