Is it typical for most college kids to go to college four or more hours away from home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But upper income kids are more likely to go further. It is very much related to socioeconomic status.

I assume upper income people are more likely to live far away from their families as adults as well?

Not if Bethesda is any indication. Seems like people here make a beeline back after college.

Yeah, it's astonishing to me how many adults we know who went to Whitman, Churchill, or BCC and are sending their kids there as well. And most of our friends and acquaintances in this situation attended college far from here, and then returned after grad school.

[Anonymous]

I don't think it has to do with money as much as access to an outstanding selection of schools relatively close by to the DMV.

None of our four oldest kids initially was willing to consider a school more than 5 driving hours away. Fortunately there are some excellent universities within that range. Two of our kids ended up at a school about 5.5-6 driving hours away, and the other two are at 4 and 5 hours. They all said they wanted to be close enough to be able to drive home for Thanksgiving and other short breaks, and they wanted us to be able to drive there for a short weekend visit. One will do a junior year abroad so that obviously will be out of driving range.

We'll see what happens with the younger kids but I bet it will be similar. They've seen the benefits of reasonable driving proximity.