@Publisher, just to clarify, my son is, actually, willing to give up sports, but he isn’t planning to give up sports. I’m asking that athletics (as a search qualifier) not be considered here in this thread. I guess the best way to describe it might be that so far, his college search has been overly saturated with discussions with schools who want him for athletics, but don’t feel like fits for one reason or another, outside of athletics. We want to find the schools that he wants for academics and social fit. Then, we’ll take that list and figure out which of those schools also offer the athletic fit that he’s looking for.
He’s never mentioned wanting to take a gap year, and I’ve never brought it up. I’ll be brutally honest and say that I don’t want him to. I want him to go straight to college. I’ve spent his entirely life building the ideology that college, for an undergrad degree is not ‘optional’, rather, it naturally follows high school diploma. A bachelor’s degree is the minimum benchmark. I know, logically, that a gap year doesn’t mean that he won’t go to college. But, in this world, in this political climate in this country, I’m just going to be blunt… There is literally no way that I’m going to so much as hint to my young black male to graduate from high school, and not be on a college campus come fall.
We’re not asking for a “dry” campus, just maybe not a total party school. I graduated from Michigan, and heaven knows there was enough drugs and alcohol available for those who were seeking it, but it’s a big enough school that those of us who weren’t had plenty of fun things to do, places to go, and sober (or sober enough) people to hang out with. That’s all we’re looking for, really-- options to have fun, and be social without drugs and alcohol.