Anyone relocating with family for grad school?

[travelnguy]

This has been weighing heavily on my mind through the entire application process. I will be relocating for grad school and my wife will follow soon after. We will leave our 3-year-old son with my parents until the Spring semester begins so that my wife has time to find work and so that we can find a house or apartment.

 

How are others making this work? This is more stressful than the application part.

 

[caterpillar]

If my husband gets in this cycle, we will be coming with him (myself, and our gaggle of children)... we did it once already for my undergrad schooling (from CA to WA). If he gets into San Diego, our plan is to get a PO box in SD and stay with his parents in Phoenix, since the travel for an interview would be dreadful but not as horrid as flying down from Washington. He has a friend in the area he could probably stay with if something disastrous happened and I didn't get a job right away. If he gets into CSUEB, we've got friends and family in the area we can stay with. Neither should be as stressful as when we moved up here - we essentially had to come up a month early, fudge our application for a rental (saying that he was going to continue working in CA to pay the rent) and then get jobs really quickly. Luckily, it worked out! The one thing I'm considering doing differently this time is using a moving service to move the items that we want to bring with us - last time, we went the Budget rental truck route, which was horrible and expensive and the stupid thing almost overheated several times on the drive through Oregon!

[Zinny]

I applied to several further away schools with the plan that if I need to I will go and my husband and children will stay behind.  He has a local self employed business that would take years to thive in a new location and two of are kids will be in HS, I couldn't bear to re-locate my daughter for her senior year.  I figure there are weekends and Skype.

[fsustar83]

This process might be the end of my relationship with my boyfriend, but its up to him at this point. I have to do whats best for me for once!!!

[rcacemek]

I'm relocating with a baby and a husband, and it makes things much more complicated! (Although thankfully my husband is in a field where it will be fairly easy to move around.)  I'm hoping one of my NYC schools provides enough funding, so we can be closer to my family in Philly!  It's hard for all of us that they only see my daughter once a month or so.  It takes a lot of planning to move, but it will hopefully be worth it! 

[Tuck]

I am relocating with a long-term boyfriend and two big dogs. It's not as big of a deal as it is for you guys with kids, but I narrowed my list of schools from 8-12-ish down to 4 based on places his industry has a presence. He has already been scoping out opportunities and will be actively applying for jobs as soon as I commit somewhere. If his current company will let him work remotely for awhile (which seems likely), he'll be moving with me right away and doing that. Otherwise, he'll probably wait until he has an offer somewhere to join me. That may make rent higher than normal for awhile.

 

I'm a little concerned about finding housing options that will accept two 50-something lbs. loveable mutts.

[kingspeech]

I also have two big dogs, a toddler, and a husband. He won't be coming until at least May 2014, so I'm going to need a 2-BR that allows large dogs, full-time daycare, and a babysitter. :/