Reed has decided to attend James Madison University this fall. Yay! Harrisonburg is about two hours away, which seems like just the right distance – close enough for a day trip to visit, but far enough that you wouldn't want to do that too often.
He was also accepted at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, with a $4,000/year scholarship, but after a visit to the campus he decided that wasn't the place for him. He was waitlisted at Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. UVA offered him the option to do his first year at their campus in Wise, Virginia (in coal country, down in the southwestern corner of the commonwealth, near the borders with Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee) and if he had at least a 3.0, then he could transfer to the main campus for his second year. But again, after visiting the campus he decided that wasn't what he wanted to do. He was rejected from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. – their loss!
In all honesty, Reed doesn't really seem too excited about JMU, but he's also just not generally a kid who gets excited about a lot of things. If he's anxious about it, we will do our best to make the transition smooth – there's an onboarding session over the summer that will hopefully help. He told us the other day that so many kids from Freedom go to JMU that they refer to it as "Freedom University" – I knew lots of Freedom kids went there, but not that many!
Tod and I aren't the best guides about what college life is like. Tod never set foot on West Point's campus before he showed up for basic training the summer before school started, and while there are some aspects of West Point that are like "regular" college, it's definitely not the same. And I have very few memories of my one semester at Radford, so my frame of reference is very small. We will learn together, and do the best we can.
I hope JMU is a terrific experience for Reed, I'm excited for him!
No comments:
Post a Comment