re: Is 24 too old to be a typical freshman at a typical USA university (LSU or any other)

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My son has solid grades, solid SAT, not exactly Harvard level but he might get into a school a half notch down. But he wants to do a few years in the military first

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When does he graduate HS? 2027? If solid SAT is 1350 or above he should give strong consideration to West Point or one of the other Service Academies to include the Merchant Marine Academy.

If he is a rising Junior then he can apply for West Point's Summer Leadership Experience which is 5 day "internship" at the Academy where candidates get a chance to see if the Academy is a good fit. Similar to an appointment to the Academy slots to SLE are limited and extremely competitive. The other academies offer a similar program as well. Applications to SLE open up in Jan (I believe). There is a ton of information about the admissions process on their website.

You mentioned Long Island Railroad so it sounds like you live in the area. I highly recommend going up to WP one day this summer for an Admissions Tour. The incoming Plebe Class is in their second week of Beast Barracks (WP version of Boot Camp) so he will get to see some of their training from a distance while on an admissions tour. You can also go to the Visitors Center in Highland Falls and take the generic tour offered to the public.

The Academy will give him a top tier "free education" and a unique college experience. He'll have to serve five years post graduation as an officer in the Army.


WP SLE Video

Just about anyone that goes into military will be that old. What are you talking about

In engineering I am guessing 20% of my classmates were nontraditional students (many of which were military).

There's not a durned thing wrong with beginning as a college freshman at 24 years old after having completed a military enlistment. There are bonuses to going this route as well, such as financial aid, significantly more maturity than other entering freshmen, an understanding of the real world that will allow him to understand when his professors are feeding him a line of BS, and an idea of what he intends to do with his professional life.

It is also entirely possible that he selects a course of study that the military is particularly interested in and he can attend college while serving during his enlistment on the government dime.

There a many more pluses to enlisting and serving prior to college than minuses. (And he can still become an officer after graduation if he opts to do so.)

There's a lot to consider in making such a decision, but it sounds like he has a decent plan.

Hell no. He will be a better student.

I had a 22/23 year old in my pledge freshman fraternity class that went this route. Great guy, but he dropped pretty quickly because he was just in a different life stage than us. Still saw him around and hung out occasionally, but he ended up getting engaged while still in undergrad at 25 and then disappeared

It's fine and a normal excuse, just won't be a traditional college undergrad experience.


ETA:

If you can imagine, he went on a lot of beer and liquor runs for us

no you got to start somewhere; there will be other people there his age