Starting Early

It's early, but I think it's a good idea to start now. So, the official College Search for Gib is ON. It's not in full swing, but I have spent a few hours on a couple different weekends scouring websites with my son in mind as I sort through what is out there and what he may be looking for. Right now that would be the big question. He doesn't really know which makes it kind of hard. Operating under his instinctive response to what size university, I'm going for under 10,000 students, and even much smaller than that. An early contender is Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. We are going to a Preview Day during Gib's fall break in October. He has invited a buddy to come with us.

Samford is a liberal arts college with 4,715 undergraduates and 8 academic divisions. There is $220 million in endowments and they appear to give pretty hefty scholarships based on both need and merit. Over 60% of the students come from out of state which is good for the diversity on the campus, and another positive for Gib is the fact that over 60% of the student population is female. The professors are highly ranked in their field, no graduate students teach classes, and the student to teacher ratio is 12:1. The university is highly ranked and I'm pleased with the statistics. So off we go to check it out. It will be an important first step in the search process for Gib to see what he thinks about the atmosphere of this type of university, the size, the feel of the campus, etc.

Another school that has made it to the list is UT Martin near Memphis. Its even larger with 7,559 undergrads, almost all in-state students.

There is a college fair at the mall at the end of the month. A friend of mine and I will drag our high schoolers with us, grab a bazillion brochures and talk to all the admission counselors. We'll see what impresses us there.

I am excited for him to start thinking about college and the next phase of his life, even if it is a bit in the future, he needs to plan for it now so he can be rewarded for all the hard work of high school. There really is a reason WHY his grades are important and to realize that keeping a GPA of 3.75 or higher and doing well on the SAT or ACT means a university like Samford will give him money to go there. Just having a mental picture in his head of sweet freedom (hah) and being his own man, having fun on campus, getting a college degree and maybe having a sizeable scholarship to do so will hopefully stick with him for the next little while of his Junior year, and as he gets ready to start taking those college entrance exams and write those all important essays.