Sort the tickets before anything else

At FIU the scarce thing is not a hotel room. It is a seat in the arena.

Every guest needs a ticket, and FIU means every guest: babies and toddlers count. A graduate can buy up to four, at $15 each, and only through MyFIU while they are registering for commencement. The tickets are then downloaded and printed through MyFIU before the ceremony. They are not handed out at the commencement fairs, and once bought they cannot be refunded or passed to someone else.

Four is a ceiling, not a promise. Ticket numbers are limited, FIU does not guarantee that every graduate can buy all four, and it warns that some ceremonies sell out in advance. So the practical order of things is: agree who is coming, make sure your graduate registers as soon as registration opens and buys the tickets in the same sitting, and only then book travel. The registration window for the coming round is in the dates table above.

If a ceremony has not sold out, the leftover tickets go on sale at the arena box office on the day, first come, first served, for cash only. A family with a fifth person hoping for a seat should bring cash and arrive early, and should not count on it. If your graduate’s ceremony is already sold out, FIU’s commencement office asks graduates to email askcommencement@fiu.edu.

Several ceremonies a day, some in the evening

FIU does not hold one big graduation. Each round is a series of separate ceremonies in the Ocean Bank Convocation Center, each for one college or a group of schools, several on each day. The fall round in the table above runs from a Tuesday to a Thursday, with ceremonies starting as early as 10 in the morning and as late as 7:30 in the evening, and the table lists which schools are in which ceremony.

Two practical consequences follow. First, a family needs only the one ceremony, so a single night, or two, is enough; there is no weekend to cover. Second, the evening ceremonies finish late on a weekday night, and the morning ones start at 10 on a working day, so the drive in overlaps the morning traffic. Stay close enough that a slow drive cannot cost you the start.

For spring and summer, FIU has published only a tentative week for each. The detailed schedule comes out after the graduation application period closes, and FIU notes that it can change.

What to leave in the car

FIU’s banned list rules out several things families like to bring. Signs, banners, flags and balloons are not allowed, and neither are fog horns or other noisemakers, outside food and drink, coolers, selfie sticks, tripods or professional photography equipment. All bags are inspected, and large bags and backpacks are turned away. Strollers are left in a designated stroller parking area.

For relatives who cannot make it, FIU livestreams its ceremonies on its webcast site.

Getting to the Convocation Center

The arena is on the Modesto Maidique Campus, beside the Turnpike in west Miami-Dade. FIU’s directions send drivers from the airport, downtown and Broward down the Turnpike to the Bird Road exit and north on SW 117th Avenue to the back entrance of the county fairgrounds, then by the signs to parking; drivers coming up from the south along SW 8th Street are pointed to the Panther Garage. On the day, follow the signs and the campus safety officers to the designated lots.

Where to sleep

There are no hotels on campus. The nearest cluster is around Dolphin Mall, about two miles north: a Hilton Garden Inn and a Homewood Suites sharing one building, a Courtyard, and a Holiday Inn Express in Doral. South of campus, a Comfort Suites on SW 117th Avenue is a mile and a half away, about seven minutes by road. We found no graduation-week minimum stay or prepayment rule at any of them.

Behind that sits all of greater Miami. Doral’s business hotels are about a quarter of an hour away, and Kendall, Coral Gables and the airport are each around twenty minutes. Brickell and Miami Beach are further but make a trip into a holiday.

We grade the lodging pressure low: each family attends one of several ceremonies, on a weekday, in a large metropolitan hotel market. That is our judgement from the supply and the schedule, not a measured count of free rooms, which we have not taken for Miami.