Cannot agree more. I went to school in midtown Atlanta, while my parents live in the south metro area (F'ville/PTC). The one summer I commuted was just ... not good. I learned the academic stuff, but there is so much more to college than just the academic stuff. You really need to be learning the whole package!

I needed 1,500 miles. :o

Soooo true... the living-on-campus experience is so important, even if your parents live right around the corner. After 18 years, who wouldn't want to move away from mom and dad and curfews and expectations that you'll be in bed at a reasonable hour and "no beer pong for YOU, young lady / young man"?

My parents were ok with wherever I wanted to go to school as long as it was somewhere that would provide a good quality education. The only school where I was expressly forbidden to apply was Yale, as New Haven wasn't exactly the safest city at the time. (I wouldn't mind sending a hypothetical child to Yale, though. New Haven is reasonably safe these days, though there are areas I wouldn't want to enter by myself at night.)

My husband's parents, OTOH, wanted him to go to an Ivy League school close to home. He was forced to apply to Yale, even though he got into MIT early action, because MIT isn't Ivy League, and his mother wanted him 1 hour's drive away instead of 3-1/2 hours. :rolleyes: I can guarandamntee you that if he'd gone to Yale she'd have driven up unannounced from time to time.

Anyway, like I said upthread, my hypothetical child's happiness would be most important, whether she picked a school around the corner or on the other side of the world - as long as she stayed away from HAHVAHD and from any school where "mandatory chapel" or "women must wear skirts" appears in the school rules.

My mom's rule of thumb was that you should go to college close enough that you can get home when you really need to, but far enough way that you can't come home whenever you want to.

LOL. When my sister and I would come home for holidays and summer, my parents would give us a 10PM curfew! Seriously. At school we came home whenever we wanted. WTF? Thank God I didn't decide to stay in BTR for school. My parents are hyper strict and nosy. They would have been all in my business.

In college, my mom was all the time "Stop calling me so much." If I was a more sensitive person, that might have hurt my feelings :p

I'm taking a new twist on this...

Over my dead body my daughter would go to... any school if she was just going there because her boyfriend was going there.

^ Cedarville?

Igree 100%, worst choice ever. Although I can imagine it can be hard to convince a ohmigodimsoinloveandhesthebestboyfriendeverrrrr teenager of this

BYU's "honor code" also freaks me out a little bit...when otherwise bright students are kicked out for having premarital sex, I think that's a problem. Colleges should only interfere in your personal life when absolutely necessary, IMO. Academic honor codes are great, of course, but this is different.

Now it's so easy to get most places (maybe not cheap, but easy) that distance really isn't an issue anymore. I never felt like I couldn't get home if I *needed* to, and I rarely ever wanted to do so.

My parents were definitely going to be all in my business, so I got as far away as I could (literally). Even now, I think my father would have a heart attack if he didn't hear from me for 2 weeks.