The City by the Bay sparkles from the air. Colors are enhanced: the azure Pacific, the gleaming copper of the Golden Gate, and the puffy white fog engulfing the city as if it were floating on a cloud in heaven.
A new bride and freshly minted Wharton MBA, I was landing in San Francisco for my honeymoon and new career in marketing. Riding off into the sunset! But I was a Jersey girl, born & raised, never pumped gas, spent my summers “down th’ Shore”: this was a scary move for me. A 5-hour flight and 3-hour time zone change.
We drove down US #1 in a Mustang convertible on our honeymoon, marveling at Carmel’s 17-Mile Drive and Big Sur. I wondered, would LA really be as Woody Allen described it, “like living in Munchkinland”? Then we returned to the Bay 
Area to live. To live! Yes, I did get homesick—my whole family was “back East”. But we built a great life in California. Breakfast every Saturday at UC Berkeley, then walks through the campus botanical gardens, taking in the otherworldly scents of the misty eucalyptus and redwood groves. Exotic compared to the maples and scrub pines of NJ.
When a client tells me, “I don’t want to get on an airplane to go to college,” I do understand. It is disorienting going far away from home. Yet, there are so many places in the world I would have never discovered if I hadn’t ventured beyond the Northeast Corridor. I’ve lived in San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston, traveled to three continents, and I don’t consider myself particularly brave.
I visited Rio de Janeiro for the first time this year. As we began our descent above spectacularly sapphire Guanabara Bay, I first set eyes on O Cristo Redentor, 
Pão de Açúcar and Dois Irmãos with the same childlike wonder as I did half my lifetime ago landing in San Francisco. I’ll never be too old to visit new places, but moving far away to live is so much easier when you’re young. So I urge students to be adventurous when developing a college list. If not now, when?
I recommend a family trip doing campus tours west of the Mississippi (worst case, a great family vacation). After all, Independence, MO was where the Oregon Trail originated, where courageous pioneers left behind everything familiar to explore new territory. You will have an advantage at colleges seeking to broaden their regional representation. Through the ages, opportunity is available to those willing to leave their comfort zone.
If your goal is to gain acceptance to an elite college in spite of the demographic gridlock created by the baby boomlet, geographic flexibility is yet another smart strategy to have in your arsenault. Willingness to venture beyond the crowded Northeast may pay off, if you’re qualified. But you will lose out on opportunities if you exclude great western schools from consideration.
Among US News & World Report’s 30 top-ranked liberal arts colleges, 8 are west of the Mississippi: Pomona, Claremont-McKenna, Harvey Mudd, and Scripps, (4 of Claremont’s 5 consortium schools), Iowa’s Grinnell, Colorado College, and Minnesota’s Carleton and Macalester (Oregon’s Reed does not participate). Of US News‘ 30 top-ranked national universities, 9 are out west: Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Northwestern U., U of Chicago, Houston’s Rice University, and Washington U. in St. Louis.
How do you feel about your child going far away to college? What are your fears or reservations about separations that require an airplane flight? For families whose kids have gone to schools far away from home, what has the experience been like for student and parents, both pro and con? What advice do you have for families whose child is about to move to a long distance college at summer’s end?
by Sally P. Springer, Jon Reider & Marion R. Franck
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2 responses so far ↓
MB // July 6, 2009 at 1:28 am
Our oldest son surprised me at a family dinner party when he was a freshmen in high school by answering the soon to be repeated question, “where are you thinking of going to college?” with the response: “California!” “I want to be someplace where I can either ski or surf!” Ha! I kept my cool, smiled, and held my breath for 3 years allowing him to do his “soul searching” and “college researching.” I never said a word about distance, airfare, or complicated logistics. I never placed any parameters or limits on what he might study or where he might consider going to college. I finally breathed a sigh of relief when he announced his college list and all of the schools happened to be within a 5 hour driving distance.” *I think the thing that would have affected us the most is the fact that we could only afford airfare for a few trips home per year – that would have meant seeing our son for the Christmas holiday and again at the school year’s end in May. That would have been an important consideration – one which he must have already taken into account.
Kris Hintz // July 6, 2009 at 3:45 am
Thank you for your thought-provoking contributions! Yes, it is one thing for a young person to impulsively declare he wants to go to a faraway exotic place for college, and quite another to actually pick up and move there. College is a big change even before adding the “far away” layer of challenge to it, so it can’t be decided lightly. It is important that throughout the college process, a young person truly gets in touch with himself so he knows what he really wants, what his limitations are, what support he will need…wherever he goes!
“Distance” can also be interpreted many ways. Obviously, there is a financial dimension that must be considered. Distance can also be psychological: a kid might feel closer going to a school that is a 7 hour drive vs. one that is a one hour airplane flight.
All of these aspects require a great deal of thought, and it sounds like your family really thought through all the key emotional issues!