I think the hardest part is that he really needs to be in the top ten percent of his class. That's kind of a hard goal to quantify. It's a small school, so there are 84 students in his class. So he needs to be one of the top students. They only give rankings once a year. Last year he was 34th. We are hoping he has moved up this year, but won't know until August. His Principal was furious, because she was pointing to his test scores which were the best in his class and then his ranking and said they did not match! LOL It's so hard for kids at 14 and 15 to realize that suddenly everything they do counts. They can tank thier cummulative GPA in ninth grade. That's a lot of pressure. I am sure he will get into some college, even if he has to start at Junior college (which would be a lot cheaper!) All three of my boys have an easy time of school. DD has always struggled some. So I will worry a lot more about her when she gets to that point.