I'm underwhelmed by your enthusiasm.

So, the college visit. Jake felt it was all "fine." Nothing jumped out at him as outstanding, but I think that, having nothing to compare it to at this point, that could change.

Billiam and I heard and saw lots of things that made us feel this particular school would be a good fit for Jake.

He could enter as undecided without a portfolio and still take lots of cool art courses. Because he's late in deciding art is probably the direction he wants to go, he is not likely to have one together in time.

It's a small school and the students and teachers really emphasized how well they get to know each other. At a larger school with huge classes I could see Jake easily letting assignments slide.

The kids seemed to be artsy-fartsy-weird-in-a-good-way enough that I could totally see him hanging out with them. "Look, Jake! It's your peeps!"

Students from all areas of study are really encouraged to explore other things. Because Jake is not 100% decided on what he wants, this atmosphere could only help.

They have a radio station. This was on Jake's list of things he wanted, so I'm including it in mine.

It's close enough to a city where he could go see local bands that would be of interest to him. At the place where Jake is with his music right now, I don't think he would be happy at a school in Podunk, USA.

Another cool thing about the school is that they have a requirement for all undergraduates to study abroad at least once before graduation. This could be in the form of a three week trip with preparatory study for seven weeks before travel and follow up study for ten weeks afterwards, summer abroad study or semester/year abroad programs. In their words:

We believe that international awareness is a requirement for anybody who wants to lead a satisfying and successful life in the global community of today.

The parents all got a chuckle when one of the teachers speaking about this program pointed out that he likes to expose the kids to a certain level of discomfort during the trip. To have them get a feel for how how life is in other parts of the world. The next speaker, a student who went on the trip to India last year, started his portion with, "And I was on the receiving end of that discomfort."

Ok, and they also had their coed a Capella group perform three songs at the start of the program. The first song, with a guy singing the main part was really nice. As was the second, with a girl. The third one brought tears to my eyes. A freshman girl sang the lead part (it was Gnarls Barkely's Crazy) and I told Bill that her mama must just cry and cry with joy each time she hears her baby sing. So why is this a reason for Jake to go there? Maybe he could become friends with this girl, eventually date and marry her, and she can sing for me at every family get together. A mom can dream, right?

End result, he has a few more schools he in interested in visiting and I think he needs to look for other schools to add to the list of possibilities.