Get Schooled: How to Plan a Family Vacation With a College Visit

When Melanie Haniph’s two children were teens with higher education on the horizon, the family made a habit of turning college visits into vacations. A trip to Boston, for example, included two college tours but also visiting the New England Aquarium and the Paul Revere House, walking a few sections of the Freedom Trail and dining in Little Italy.

“It brings the whole place alive,” says Haniph, a Gen Xer who went on to found College Admissions for Parents to help families get through the college-planning process.

“When we came back, talking to my son, it wasn’t ... ‘What did I think about [Boston University]?’ It was also ‘What did I think about Boston? What do I think about whether or not this is a place I would want to spend four years?’  ”

Some Gen Xers have rebelled against their reputation as the “least-parented generation” by maintaining deep involvement in their children’s educational and social development. According to Pew Research Center statistics, they also attended college at a higher rate than their boomer parents, which typically means a postsecondary path for their children too.

That characteristic Gen X involvement continues along the runway to college, which can be a busy and emotional time all around. Schedules may be packed with work, school, extracurriculars and socializing as the inevitability of adulthood looms. Combining a college visit and a vacation in some ratio isn’t just financially intelligent multitasking; it helps rebrand a potentially stressful endeavor as an informational trip that’s fun for the whole family — siblings and grandparents often included.

To further depressurize, focus on soaking in the experience versus finding “The One.”

“I’ll make the analogy to dating,” says Dominique Padurano, founder, president and head coach at Crimson Coaching, a private college counseling company.

“It’s only going out with people that you don’t really hit it off with that you begin to get a real sense of what you do want in a partner, right?” she continues. “And so by going to colleges that aren’t great fits, you will sometimes say, ‘Oh, well, I need a bigger campus’ or ‘I actually want to be in a city more than I want to be in a suburb.’ And so they’re all really important visits.”

It doesn’t bother Haniph that neither of her kids went to school in Boston. “It was just a great trip. We talk about it a lot,” she says. “It was the college tour that brought us there, but it’s the experience of the city itself that would have us going back.”

We spoke to the pros for tips to help you plan and maximize a combo vacation-college trip.