As an accepted student, my son keeps getting mailings about Ole Miss’s Jump Start program for incoming freshman to come for a session during the summer. Does anyone have any personal experience with that UM pre-freshman summer program? Do you think it is mostly for relatively poor students?
We don’t want to make a decision about whether that program could be right for my son based solely on UM’s marketing expertise. The description of Jump Start given in the mailers and on the website sounds great, but I’m wondering how Jump Start lives up to those promises. Thanks for any input!
The jump start seems to be geared more toward students without a strong academic background. I could be wrong though. I would enroll him into the Fasttrack program. My son is in it and he has thrived. He scored very high on his ACT but didn’t apply himself grade wise. Fastrack gives you a mentor in addition to an advisor and they take 9 hours-math, science, english with the same group of students so they can form study groups etc. The other 3-6 hours they take courses that have bigger class sizes. The kids that complete the Fasttrack program generally perform much better the rest of their careers at Ole Miss than non Fasttrack kids.
Thanks so much, upperarlington! I’m excited to know about the Fasttrack program. It sounds perfect and I’ll encourage my son to apply ASAP. Just curious: does your son find there’s any stigma associated with the Fastback program?
No stigma, in fact the fastrack kids get their choice of living in the 2 year old dorm Burns Hall versus the zoo atmosphere in Stockard or Kincannon. No one cares where they live, I like getting emails on updates and the opportunity to talk to his academic mentor if I have any questions. He went through rush and pledged also.