A sense of humor all his

When I was growing up, preparing for a career was implied to mean, get a college degree. Once graduated, you then started building your resume. Um, yeah. Hindsight says there was a lack of advice with that.
So Cole has benefited in that he understands that even what you do in high school has a huge impact on what College you get into. And what College you get into has a huge impact on who hires you (or in his case, what grad school you get into). Not to mention ACT scores, ect.

Right away in the 9th grade it's about building that resume. What sports did you play, what classes did you take (in his case dual enrollment and advaced placement classes means he'll be a college sophmore when he graduates HS), were you on the National Honor Society, ect.

One thing that he did this year was enter the regional Chemisty competitive scholarship program. the top 5 qualifiers from each school are invited to take another test at the local university. More importantly, the top 20 winners get cash! 11-20th get $30. 1st is $600, 2nd is $500, and so on.

So as a junior competing against almost entirely seniors and even kids from private science prep schools?
Yep, spanked them all. The prep kids perrenially win every year so his teacher was especially jazzed about it.

Cole and his school's valeditorian this year, who took 9th place.

But listen to Cole's answer here at the end. Most of the kids are coming up expousing on what prestigious college they're going to and what they're studying.

Cole's answer was much more simple *g*