Jarod Opperman / The BulletinSarahi Orea, left, and Carolyn Davio and Janelle Orsillo, right, are seniors in Summit High Schoolís future class, where students get help with college applications and picking out schools. They worked on a writing prompt at the start of class Thursday.

’Tis the season — for college application deadlines.

If you know a high school senior, there is a good chance he or she will spend the holidays fretting over essays and extra curriculars, and dodging questions from family members: Where are you applying? What are you going to study? Have you heard back from any schools?

One of the harder questions to answer — for student and parent alike — may be: How far away are you going?

“Part of it is that I think I’ve always wanted to go to school on the East Coast,” said Ella Feldmann, 18, who graduated from Bend High School this year and is now a freshman at Brown University in Rhode Island. “It wasn’t about not wanting to be near home; it was just needing a change in environment.”

The more than 1,100 graduates from Bend-La Pine Schools’ class of 2015 went on to attend colleges and universities in 30 states outside of Oregon — up from 23 last year — and a handful chose international schools. But the majority stayed closer to home, a decision that can come down to cost: There’s out-of-state or private school tuition, plus the cost of travel and shipping.

“When I talk to families, I go, ‘So, are you OK with your child only coming home for winter break, because that’s what is realistically going to happen,” said Kent Child, director of the Future Center at Summit High School, where students get help with their post-graduation plans.

Most students who pick far away schools aren’t simply looking to be far from home, she said.

“It’s the challenge of it — it’s a little bit scary out there,” Child said. “But there again, it was really comforting that you had your parents’ approval, that you’re not going off somewhere willy-nilly.”

A 2009 study in the Journal of College Admission looked at nearly a million students and found more than half stayed within 100 miles of home and 72 percent attended a school in their home state. In Oregon, 66 percent of students went to college in state. Unsurprisingly, smaller states sent more students out of state — Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island and New Hampshire all had more than half their students go out of state.

Researchers say the better a student’s GPA or SAT scores, the more likely he or she is to go farther from home. The same goes for family income and parent education level.

A separate study found over the past 40 years, the percentage of students staying close to home remained relatively unchanged — in 1969, 36 percent of students stayed within 50 miles of home, compared to 35 percent in 2006.

Until this year, there was no four-year school within 50 miles of home for Central Oregon students. OSU-Cascades opened to freshmen this fall, and 22 graduates from Bend-La Pine enrolled there. This year, as in years past, Central Oregon Community College was by far the most popular among the district’s college-going graduates.

Summit High senior Lauren Gallivan, 17, has applied to schools in Oregon, Washington and California, but also to University of Virginia, University of Notre Dame and Boston College. “I applied to some close and some far. I wanted to give myself some choices when it comes time to decide,” she said.

Kelsey Macy, 17, another Summit senior, applied only to Portland State University. For her, location was key: She wanted to be in a city, in the downtown area and a reasonable driving distance from home.

“I wanted to get out of Bend. That was my main goal,” she said. “Portland is close enough, but it’s also far.”

Feldmann, the freshman at Brown, said she is happy with her decision to go so far away. She didn’t come back for Thanksgiving and isn’t planning to for winter break, but she is making new friends and Skypes with her parents once a week. (“It’s harder for them, I think — I’m an only child; there’s no one to replace me.”)

Of the 15 or so schools Feldmann considered applying to, most were on the East Coast. Instead of staying close to home, she said, she is learning to take care of herself.

“I think it’s definitely a different college experience — no less legitimate, but when you can go home in three hours, it’s maybe a little bit easier to rely on that.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7837,

aspegman@bendbulletin.com