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Reply to "Maturity and Deciding"

@Francis7 I agree on knowing what you want to be when you grow up. Some kids are very clear about it. The vast majority are not...or even if they think they know, they change their mind. I think your major influences the decision the most with science/engineering majors and business majors and those do seem like majors that students have stronger feelings about at a younger age. 

As for maturity, I do think that is one of the problems with super early commitments. I've seen a huge change in my son even over the past year (from junior to senior year). There are some mature 8th graders but my kid would not have been making a decision at 13...we would have made it for him. We definitely felt recruiting pressure ("if you don't decide soon the money/spots will be gone") but stuck to our timeline. We needed him to be mature enough that he was driving the decision with a solid head on his shoulders. Plus he grew 5 inches after his freshman year. He is not sure what he wants to major in so he looked for a school with broad options and other considerations become important drivers. I'm not going to lie, he rejected some schools because he thought the baseball field was ugly but his logical decisions outweighed his illogical ones. Plus, I fell in love with my college because the campus was beautiful so how different was I as a 16 year old and I turned out fine? The other part of this is that as important as the school is, the most important part of your college experience is what you personally put into it so that means that there are several schools where your son can have a great experience.      

Finally, I completely agree with @used2lurk...PTWoodson is the last of three. He went on multiple tours and college visits with his sisters and that helped a lot. It's great if you can get them on different size campuses and different types of campuses (urban, rural, etc.).  In addition to our local schools (Georgetown, UMD, GWU, GMU, Towson, UMBC), we also walked around campuses (e.g. TN, GT, UGA, Duke, UNC, Auburn, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina) when we were at tournaments or driving to or from tournaments. If my husband was with the kids, they snuck on the football/baseball fields and the basketball arena and then sent pictures claiming they thought it was the dean's office but it "must have moved."  If they were with me, we visited academic building or the commons. LOL

The trick if you have an athlete is layering the sports considerations on top of all the other considerations. In a way, it helps narrow things down considerably.

 

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