Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Z. Kelly Queijo
It's "Travel Tuesday" (a designation on Twitter for travel related tweets posted on -- you guess it -- Tuesdays! Travel Tuesday Tweets carry the hashtag "#traveltuesday" or "#TT" (case does not matter). In honor of #TT, our post today provides travel planning resources for the college-bound.
Planning Campus Visit Travel
If you're planning spring college visits, then you're likely already in the throws of making hotel reservations and wrestling with the answer to "Will I fly or will I drive?" To help you evaluate costs related to college visit travel, we've provided the following resources. Let us know if you find any of these useful and, please feel free to suggest other tools or tips in the Comments section.
- Fly or Drive Calcualtor - I ran across Fly vs. Drive: A Website to Help You Decide on TravelingMom.com (where I also blog). It allows you to compare the costs of flying to the cost of driving. You can adjust various components to get an accurate assessment of travel costs.
- Fuel Calculator - Developed by a college student for Smart College Visit, this is a handy fuel calculator to make it easy to find out how much you'll spend on fuel for your college road trip.
- Find the Perfect Hotel - This takes you to our Smart College Visit hotel search site. Here, you can search by city and travel dates, get hotel reviews, book online, find pet-friendly hotels, and view nearby attractions--which is always nice when traveling with family--you can turn your campus visit into a mini-vacation! Our prices are competitive but if you want to save even more money, book flight and hotel together. You can do this by using the Vacation Packages travel tab.
It takes a little extra time to plan college visit travel cost-effectively, but by evaluating costs before your trip, you may find ways to save so it's affordable to bring a friend or additional family members along with out breaking the bank.
Do you have travel tips to share with other college-bound families? Please post them in the comment section or on our Facebook page.
Feel free to post these tweets and follow @collegevisit
Will you fly or drive to visit campus? Check out these handy travel tools: http://www.smartcollegevisit.com #TT
Planning college visits? Evaluate travel costs with these handy tools: http://www.smartcollegevisit.com #TT
HAPPY TRAVEL TUESDAY !
Book Travel Packages for College Visits & VacaysNew Deals for Family Travel Planning
Here, on SCV, we have offered travel planning tools for families to make it easy to book hotels, rent cars, get directions and discover the fun and important things to see and do on a college campus since our launch in 2009. Today, that service just got better.
Think "College Travel AND Vacation Packages"
We know that many smart families plan to visit colleges while vacationing. We also know that travelers can often save money when bundling their travel by choosing money-saving deals on hotel and flight combinations any time of year.
This means that you don't have be planning trips to exotic vacation spots to take advantage of travel bundles -- you can use our vacation search to get deals on travel most anywhere you want to go -- just click Book Your Travel from the home page to explore the travel booking tools.
To research travel to specific schools, please enter the name of the college in the Plan Your College Visit search box and click on the school you want to visit. The Visit Campus link on each school page will show you the location-specific tools we have available to make planning your college visit easier.
Other travel related categories on Smart College Visit
Travel Tips | Smart See, Smart Do| Smart Learning
College Visit Travel Planning Links
Getting Back to Basics
Sometimes when traveling, whether on the road or in the air to visit colleges, you just need access to basic, simple, easy to use travel related information. The following list provides just that:
Some Basic Travel Links
- SCV Hotel Search
- FAA: Flight Delay Information
- The Weather Channel
- Weather Underground
- State Transportation Web Sites
- Smart College Visit Fuel Calculator
- Free in 50 States
Smart College Visit Travel Tip: Google a flight number to check its status.
Do you have a favorite travel site or travel tip? Please comment to share your tip!
MapQuest Your College VisitHitting the road to visit colleges this summer?
There are many good online mapping tools for planning your college visit road trip and MapQuest has a feature that makes printing directions a thing of the past.
After entering your "from" and "to" information to get directions, you can direct MapQuest to deliver the output to your GPS device or directly to your mobile phone.
If you plan to send your routes to your GPS device, you will need to install or download software specific to your device. It's pretty easy to do so and well worth the few minutes it takes so you can easily post directions directly to your GPS.
To do have MapQuest send directions to your smart phone, all you have to do is enter a cell phone number and a link to view directions in the mobile web browser will be sent as a text message. Click on the link to open the directions for an easy-to-read, mobile friendly display. You'll never print directions again!
You can also choose to embed the code to display directions on a website or to share on Facebook. How will you get to college this summer?
Boston: A College Kid's PlaygroundWith population of roughly 600,000 residents with a median of 31.1 years of age, Boston is possibly one of the most young-adult-friendly cities in the country offering countless opportunities to experience real city life with a college town atmosphere.
More than 200,000 area college students thrive in the city that knows how to meet their needs for fun. Prospective students visiting a college or university in Boston may want to plan to stay an extra day (or two) and explore not only what the schools here have to offer (there are more than 50 in the metropolitan alone), but also what this fabulous city can provide.
Top 10 Things to do in Boston after your College Visit
- Visit the Museum of Science -- fun for all ages, always new and exciting exhibits, reasonably priced.
- Have a delicious Italian dinner in North End and top it off with a cannoli from Mike’s Pastry.
- Take a Duck Tour -- a fun way to get to know the history of the city in a really cool automobile.
- See a Red Sox Game, or at least tour Fenway Park -- can be pricey, but always worth it.
- Explore the Commons and the Public Garden -- beautiful in spring and summer, and always FREE.
- Shop at Fanueil Hall Market.
- Walk through Cambridge -- get that old Boston brick feel here. Numerous eclectic shops, especially in Harvard Square.
- Walk Smoots Bridge to Cambridge -- walk the bridge measured in smoots.
- Don't miss the New England Aquarium.
- Visit the JFK Presidential Library -- a great way for parents to share a bit of their generation with their kids. Beautiful library; a bit of a commute but worth it.
Check out the Convention and Visitors Bureau for more information about fun, learning, and play in Boston. Photo credit: Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau.
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Chelsea Merget, a junior at Boston University is pursuing a degree in Communications with a minor in Psychology and is a public relations intern with Smart College Visit, Inc. To read more of Chelsea's work, click here.
Planning to visit a college campus? Unsure where to begin? Use SmartCollegeVisit.com to search for colleges and book your trip. Our goal is to make campus visit planning effortless and to provide the tools you and your family need to make smart college choices.
Search for colleges by name, location, major or other key words, then select the school you want to know more about from the list on the results page. Book your travel using the Smart Visit travel tool on each college profile. It's that simple!
Smart College Visit Travel Tips & Tools
College Visit Planning Articles
- Top 10 Tips for Dressing Smart for your
College Admissions Interview - Dos and Don'ts on a College Visit
- Keeping Track of College Visits
- The Visitor Parking Pass
Travel Related Links
