These assessments were based on the original colleges that Nola Kate gave me in her intake questionnaires. 

Your Gap Analysis is designed to answer one important question: Where are you right now compared with where we want your application to be when you submit it?

This document looks at the strengths you already bring to the process, areas where we can still strengthen your candidacy, and anything that could create unnecessary risk if we leave it unaddressed. Your GPA is obviously one of your greatest strengths. We will also look at your academic rigor, activities, leadership, service, career interests, honors, resume development, testing strategy, writing and overall application narrative.

Do not read the word "gap" as meaning something is wrong. Every student has gaps. This document simply helps us identify what we can still improve while there is time to improve it.

It also allows us to prioritize. We do not need to spend equal time on every part of your application. Instead, we will focus most heavily on the pieces that can make the greatest difference in admission and scholarship decisions.

Your College and Career Assessment takes a much broader view of the process. College is not simply about getting admitted somewhere. We want to make sure the schools you are considering actually make sense for you, what you want to study and the type of future you may want to build.

Because journalism and mass media are broad fields, we will continue exploring exactly where your interests fall. You may ultimately be most interested in traditional journalism, broadcast journalism, digital media, communications, public relations, social media, sports media, political communication, entertainment media, content creation or another related path. You absolutely do not need to know the final answer right now.

What matters is that we choose colleges that give you flexibility and opportunity.

The assessment also looks beyond majors. We consider campus size, location, distance from Birmingham, student life, internship access, academic environment, career preparation, scholarship potential and the overall experience you want from college.

As we continue working together, this document will help us determine which colleges deserve to move higher on your list and which may eventually come off.

Your Risk Analysis looks specifically at the colleges that were on your original list and evaluates how your current academic profile compares with what those schools typically expect.

This is not simply an admission-prediction document. I am also looking at scholarship risk.

A college may be relatively safe for admission but much more difficult from a scholarship standpoint. Another college may be test optional for admission but still use ACT scores heavily when awarding automatic merit. Those distinctions matter enormously for you because we are not simply trying to get you admitted—we want to position you to receive as much scholarship consideration as possible.

Your current ACT score is one factor in that analysis, but it is not the only one. Your transcript tells a very different story about your academic ability, and part of our strategy is identifying colleges that will recognize that.

As your application develops, we can also update these risk categories. A stronger ACT score, additional honors, stronger activities, excellent essays or competitive scholarship applications could change how we view some schools.

After reviewing your original college list and looking closely at your academic profile, career interests and scholarship needs, I wanted to expand our search.

Because you are interested in journalism, mass communication, media and related fields, I am looking for colleges that give you strong opportunities to actually write, report, create, produce, broadcast and build a portfolio while you are still an undergraduate. I also want schools where internships, student media, television, digital journalism, social media, public relations and other communications opportunities are easily accessible.

Just as importantly, I am approaching this search from a scholarship perspective. Your very high GPA is one of the strongest parts of your application, while your current ACT score could limit automatic merit at some colleges. That means we need to look intentionally for schools that are test optional, provide GPA-based merit scholarships, offer competitive scholarships beyond the automatic ACT charts, or have departmental scholarships that could reward your academic record, writing, leadership and involvement.

I expanded our search to roughly a six-hour driving radius from Birmingham and looked at both large universities and smaller colleges. Some are traditional big-campus experiences, some are smaller and more personal, and some are in cities that could give you tremendous access to media internships and professional experience.

A few schools that I especially want us to investigate further include:

This is one of the strongest additions to your list. Mississippi State gives you the large university experience while also offering Broadcast and Digital Journalism and Print and Digital Journalism pathways. It is particularly interesting because its scholarship structure can be very favorable to students with extremely strong GPAs.

Do not overlook WKU simply because it may not be a school you originally considered. It has an excellent reputation in journalism, broadcasting and visual media and offers a very hands-on media environment. It is also one of the colleges I find especially interesting for you financially because of its GPA-based scholarship opportunities and out-of-state tuition incentives.

Montevallo could become one of our strongest financial and academic safety options. It offers Multimedia Journalism and media production opportunities and has been very friendly to test-optional students in both admission and scholarship consideration. It also gives you a very different experience from a large SEC-style university, which makes it valuable to have on the list.

Jacksonville State is another school I want us to consider seriously from a scholarship standpoint. It offers Digital Journalism, Digital Media Production and related communication options, while also rewarding students with strong GPAs even when test scores are not the strongest part of the application.

Belmont gives us something very different: journalism and media study in Nashville. That location creates tremendous opportunities for internships, storytelling, music and entertainment media, communications and networking. Because Belmont is a private university, we will need to see what your actual scholarship package looks like rather than judging it solely by the published tuition price.

Loyola is another private-school wildcard worth exploring. It offers journalism within its mass communication program and is located in an extraordinary city for storytelling, culture, media and communications. Its test-optional scholarship approach makes it particularly interesting for your academic profile.

I also want to continue looking seriously at schools such as Ole Miss, Samford, UNA, Alabama, the University of Memphis, Southern Miss, Murray State and Middle Tennessee State depending on program fit, scholarship opportunities and what kind of campus environment ultimately feels right to you.

The goal is not to create the longest possible college list. The goal is to give you choices. By the end of this process, I want you to have several schools where you would genuinely be happy to attend, several where admission is highly likely, and ideally multiple schools competing for you financially.