Post College Graduation Europe Trip With Friends

When young, foot loose and fancy free, I would suggest Budapest, Vienna and Prague. The beer halls and English Gardens in Munich are another must see for any recently graduating bohemians.

Amsterdam would also be another great city for young adults, but it's just a little too far out of the way. Save it for when you get a job and get your first 2 weeks' vacation. Because you will be back.
You're fortunate that 2017 airfares are currently down from recent years.
I first visited Munich, Vienna and Venice while in college at the University of Innsbruck in 1970. And we've returned many, many times.

These trip planning tips are spot-on, so I'd read that first.

Prague and Budapest are the geographic outliers on your list, so I'd scratch them. Something along these lines might work:

Fly into Berlin
Munich
Amsterdam
Paris
French Riviera or beaches near France/Spain border
Barcelona, then fly home.

aet, your list of destinations, and potential airports don't match, except for Paris. So my advice is don't fly into somewhere you don't intend to visit. The other is fly into one destination and out of another so that you are not backtracking. That is, look at multi-city (aka open-jaw) ticketing, which will get you near a round-trip fare.

A good guidebook will help: there are a lot of questions that you might not know to ask yet.

With 4 weeks on the ground in Europe this would be comfortable (and lots of fun .... take me ??)

Fly in to Paris, then TGV to Montpellier & TER to Collioure (3N)
Train to Barcelona (4N)
Fly to Munich (3N)
Train to Budapest (4N)
Train to Prague (3N)
Train to Berlin (4N)
Train to Amsterdam (3N)
Train to Paris (4N)
Fly out of Paris

FYI Collioure
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/france/pyrenees/3201221/Collioure-France-welcome-to-the-cut-price-Cote-dAzur.html

Thanks everyone! This is super helpful. How would you change things if we wanted to make 24 days or less?

Maybe this, assuming you can fly 'open jaw' (in to Madrid and out of Paris)

Fly in to Madrid (3N)
2.5hrs by train to Barcelona (4N)
Fly to Budapest (3N)
6.5hrs by train to Prague (3N)
4.5hrs by train to Berlin (4N)
6.5hrs by train to Amsterdam (3N)
3.5hrs by train to Paris (4N)
Fly out of Paris

Get your beach time in Barcelona.

Fast Eddie's itinerary is good, but that time of year I would go from south to north. More below.

Stan's advice to fly into a place you are actually visiting is golden. Hopefully you can get a good fare to Barcelona. That doesn't mean you need a direct flight!

The French axis, through Paris, is especially efficient because of the way the trains work there. I don't know what you are looking for in a French beach, so you and your copaignes should get that straight. The beaches around Nice are famous but it's a bit out of your way; there are some very nice beaches in French Catalonia (such as the previously mentioned Collioure) and of course near Barcelona.

Some advice you did not ask for: The more your group can be involved in the planning, the better trip everybody will have.

Congrats on pending graduation.

David's itineraries include really long train rides. Use bahn.com to look at train schedules. It's the German train site, but it has schedules for all of Europe. Also use rome2rio.com for various transportation options. You are likely to find that flying will save you time and may not cost more. Although rail passes may work for you - there may be deals for students and/or youth. Or you may be able to use the (rapidly disappearing) night train for one or more of your legs. To find flights, also use wiki - it's page for each airport includes a table listing all the airlines and destinations available.

For your transatlantic flights, you should look at open-jaw flights (usually by choosing the "multi-destination" option). Keep in mind that saving on those tickets may not outweigh the time and money to get to your destination cities.

Prague and Budapest are generally cheaper, paris and Amsterdam expensive and Spain and Germany in the middle. Use a site like hostelworld.com or hostelz.com to find hostels, read descriptions and reviews. You can get dorm rooms for 4 or 6 (depending on how many of you there are) with a private bath. You will have to pay for the extra bed if you're an odd number, but it could still save money. An advantage to staying in hostels is that you can get lots of info and tips from the other guests, even for places you are headed to.

Frankfurt is worth spending a day on arrival before heading to Munich.

6.5hrs by train from Budapest to Prague, and Berlin to Amsterdam are about timewise when I would start to consider a flight alternative. In both these cases, however, I would stick with the train. It's a whole day given over to travel - use it to relax and recharge in comfort.

"The cities...in no particular order...." I am aware of the list of cities is in random order but the way they appear above gives the night train option for Munich to Berlin via Hannover, and Prague to Budapest, direct. If you shift any around, say in the order of Berlin to Budapest, that can be done by night train too. Budapest is a hub for night trains...Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Munich, Krakow. If you have four full weeks, then I would consider the Eurail Youth Pass, 2nd class, since you qualify by being under 26.

Here are some tools, if you don't already know about them:
www.seat61.com

www.bahn.com (German rail, good schedules for everywhere but only sells German tickets.)

www.skyscanner.com (one-way budget air fares in Europe.)

Any city official tourism office.

The odds are that a multi-city ticket across the Atlantic will be a better deal than a simple round trip when you factor in the cost in time and money of getting back to the city where you first landed.
Every change of city uses up at least a half a day and some of your budget.
For my tastes, I would visit either Prague or Budapest in eastern Europe. I agree about going to Barcelona's beaches and forget the French beach experience (pleasant though it can be.) Use the extra time to get to know the key destinations better (especially where to party, or party again.) One tip about Berlin, a wild city: Its airline connections are very limited, at least for trans-Atlantic flights, most of them requiring a change at a European gateway city. But many of its hotels are a bargain.
If this is the first time you and your friends have taken a long trip together, it is also important to work out guidelines now, before you take off. My advice is to agree than anyone can go off on her own, and can choose a different activity than the group. Also carefully work out how joint expenses will be paid. Togetherness can be over-rated when there's more than two involved.

You should be able to get some cheap fares from New York. Open jaw will keep you from backtracking. Davids plan is great. You are college students, the long train rides will be used to catch up on sleep. Stay in hostels. They are a great resource for talking to other travelers and seeing what are the best places to go, whether other hostels or bars or cities. With a rail pass you can change your itinerary if need be.

This is awesome! Great advice. We are thinking of one of the two below (thanks, David!!). The reason being that it is cheapest to fly into Madrid, Barcelona and Spain. So using open jaw booking we could do international flights for the below options for about 550. Thoughts?

Option 1:
Fly in to Madrid (3N)
2.5hrs by train to Barcelona (4N)
Fly to Budapest (3N)
6.5hrs by train to Prague (3N)
4.5hrs by train to Berlin (4N)
6.5hrs by train to Amsterdam (3N)
3.5hrs by train to Paris (4N)
Fly out of Paris

Option 2:
Fly into Barcelona
Barcelona (4N)
Fly to Munich (3N)
Train to Budapest (3N)
Train to Prague (3N)
Train to Berlin (3N)
Train to Amsterdam (3N)
Train to Paris (4N)
Fly out of Paris

Leave time for a stop at the caviar bar at CDG airport.

And the togetherness advice is also golden. Have a daily meet-up point, or if someone ones to go elsewhere for a night or more, have a plan for how group expenses are taken care of.

In addition to all this good info, you might find it helpful to check out: reddit.com/r/backpacking... a website for travelers in your age group. My son (26) used it for his recent 3 wk trip to Asia. Your trip sounds great!

I would choose the Madrid option over Munich, mostly as a personal preference, but Munich > Budapest is a 7 hour trip as opposed to Madrid > Barcelona of 2.5 hours.
FYI, you do have a night train option for Budapest to Prague. It's an experience everyone should try, and can save you accomm $$ as well as give you extra daylight hours at your destination.