The college tour planner: every campus in a city, and how to keep track of them all

Most families plan to see three or four colleges. Then a cousin mentions a school you hadn't considered, a friend's kid loved somewhere two hours away, and the list doubles.

This guide is for the parent doing the planning: where campuses cluster, how to string them into one trip, and how to keep every visit straight in Pond Passport.

Why you'll tour more campuses than you planned

A tour and an information session take a morning or an afternoon, so in a city with several campuses close together it's tempting to fit two in a day. A long weekend turns into five schools.

Somewhere around the fifth, they blur together. Was the dorm with the huge common room at the second school or the fourth? Which tour guide did your senior actually like? By the time applications are due, the details you'd want most are the ones that faded first.

Colleges by city

Some cities make it easy. These four have the most campuses in Pond Passport within a short drive of each other.

Boston

Boston has the biggest cluster. Boston University and Northeastern are in the city, and MIT, Harvard, Tufts and Boston College are all within about six miles.

The Massachusetts guide has every campus in the state on one page.

Atlanta

Emory, Georgia Tech, Morehouse and Spelman are all in Atlanta. Morehouse and Spelman share a neighborhood, so they fit easily into the same day.

The Atlanta guide has the rest of what you can collect while you're there.

Los Angeles

UCLA and USC are both in Los Angeles, and Caltech is about nine miles away in Pasadena. UC Irvine is roughly an hour south.

The California guide lists every campus in the state.

Washington, D.C.

Georgetown and Howard are in the city, and the University of Maryland is just outside it in College Park. Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, about an hour up the road.

The Washington, D.C. guide has the monuments and museums for the time between tours.

Planning a college road trip

Once the list crosses state lines, a road trip is usually easier than separate flights. Here are three routes built from campuses in Pond Passport. The driving times are rough ranges without bad traffic, so check a map the week you go.

A New England loop. Start with the Boston campuses. Brown in Providence is about an hour to an hour and a half south, and Yale in New Haven is roughly two hours past that. Dartmouth is its own trip, two to two and a half hours north of Boston.

The Northeast corridor. Columbia and NYU are both in New York. Rutgers in New Brunswick is about an hour from the city, Princeton is around 30 minutes past that, and Penn in Philadelphia is about an hour further, with Villanova just outside the city. Keep going and Johns Hopkins is about two hours from Philadelphia, with the D.C. campuses an hour beyond.

Southern California. UCLA, USC and Caltech are 30 minutes to an hour apart depending on traffic, so an early start covers all three in a day. UC Irvine is an hour to an hour and a half south, and UC San Diego and San Diego State are another hour and a half or so past Irvine. UC Santa Barbara is the detour north, around two hours from Los Angeles.

A college visit checklist

At each campus, write down:

• The dorm. The room you saw, and whether your senior could picture living there.
• The dining hall. Whether you ate there, and what it was like.
• The class you sat in on. The subject, and the professor if you caught their name.
• The feeling. One line, written in the car before the next campus. This is the one you'll want most.

Here's how to keep it all in YourPond:

1. Before the trip, add every campus to your Bucket List. Open the stamp and tap "Add to Bucket List."
2. After each visit, tap "I've been here." The stamp moves into your collection on its own, along with its city and state.
3. Write the note on the stamp while it's fresh, using the checklist above.
4. Tap "Add & create a moment" to log the day with its date and who came.

Keeping the memories

The college tour fall is its own chapter for a family. Long drives, too many information sessions, and the one campus where everyone went quiet because it just felt right.

Add your senior to each visit, along with anyone else who came along. They're a person on the moment, so they don't need an account of their own. Years from now, the stamps hold the whole trip: which campuses you saw together, when you saw them, and who was in the car.

For the full Ivy League and Big Ten sets, and the college towns, see Every college campus you've set foot on, as a passport stamp.

How to start

Open YourPond, find Campuses in Pond Passport, and put this fall's list on your Bucket List. Good luck out there!

Pond Passport is free on the web and in the YourPond iPhone app.

Browse the campus stamps · Stamps by place · Every college campus you've set foot on