Need help planning a college tour?

Summer vacation is in the not too distant future, and although we hope you will enjoy your trip to the beach or wherever, it's also a good time to work in a few college visits.  In fact, perhaps you can build this year's vacation around a college tour! After all, there are some outstanding schools to visit in some spectacular cities/states.

For example, if you're headed to New York City, you could look at Fordham, Hofstra, Columbia, Barnard, and NYU.  Or you could venture outside the city and go see Syracuse, Colgate, Hamilton, Ithaca, Cornell, Hobart & William Smith, and Rochester.  All of those are in a fairly concentrated area.  You could also add on Skidmore, Bard, and Vassar..

Perhaps you'd rather spend some time in our nation's capital.  There's so much to do in D.C., but check out all schools names "George;" Georgetown University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Then add American University and the University of Maryland at College Park.

From there it wouldn't be difficult to travel over to Baltimore and spend some time at Johns Hopkins, Loyola, Goucher, and McDaniel.  Or you can dip down into Virginia and see the University of Mary Washington, Lynchburg College, and James Madison University. Traveling even further south, you can see Virginia Commonwealth, the University of Richmond, and the College of William & Mary for a chance to run into Ben Franklin at the local convenience store in Williamsburg (it happened to me!). There's also UVA, Washington & Lee, Roanoke, and Virginia Tech.

All of these trips provide you with a chance to see a variety of schools, urban, rural, state universities and small liberal arts schools.  That's what your trip should be about! Explore, investigate, and consider ALL your options before you narrow down your list.

Here are a few more of our favorite trips, but if you need more ideas, just let us know. We've got some great ideas for college tours on the west coast.

The Bluegrass Tour: Kentucky and Ohio are home to some of the finest liberal arts schools in the country. Travel through horse country and stop at the University of Kentucky, Centre College, Transylvania University, Xavier University, Miami-Ohio, and the University of Dayton.

The Windy City Tour: The Chicago area is home to some excellent schools that have been popular with GPS students over the years: Wheaton, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Loyola-Chicago, and Lake Forest.

The Longhorn State: It's hot in the summer, but there are plenty of schools to visit on I-35.  Start with SMU in Dallas, and if you're interested in the STEM fields, make sure you visit the University of Texas @ Dallas! It's a great school for those disciplines! The University of Dallas is also worth seeing.  Then move on to TCU Ft. Worth, drive down to Waco to visit Baylor University, and then do yourself a favor and stop in Georgetown (outside of Austin) and see Southwestern University. Then you can finish up at that other UT, the University of Texas in Austin, and St. Edward's University, also in Austin.  If you have time, keep going to San Antonio for Trinity University and then perhaps over to Houston to see Rice.