The first out of state college we visited this summer. It was an Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Even though my kid does not talk about the service academies, he already has some flying lessons behind his belt and seriously wants to become a pilot, we thought why not? We just did a regular visitor tour, but it did give us some insight into the life of the cadets.
A coworkers son went to the Air Force Academy, got into flight school, and then flies bombers. My dad has been in aviation most of his life. Most people do not get to fly. You need perfect eyes and ears and then there is the pace of pre and flight school that some people cannot handle. Its not just an intellectual thing - its mind and body and some VERY smart people just cannot handle it. And manned flight is being phased out with UAVs. The Army, unlike the other services, will guarantee a slot and if you do not make it, you can back out. However, the Army mostly does Rotary, not fixed wing.
We plan to visit Caltech in October and Stanford in a year from now. I do want to make sure that we visit while colleges are in session and I would love for my kid to sit for some of the lectures. They probably won't let him thought till he is a senior. Any thoughts there?
UNC and Duke on one trip, Boston area on the other. Boston and New England will be very challenging since there is so much to see there. And we have absolutely no friends there!
The kids change so much between freshman and junir years, but I have no choice other than to spread it out in time...
Stanford is a lot more fun than Caltech. Caltech can really beat kids down with the work load.
