Ryan College Bound

Post 7 of 7 | Proverbs 22:6 in Practice

We end where we began - with a child, a path, and a promise.
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” - Proverbs 22:6

I have returned to this verse throughout this series because I believe it is not merely a parenting principle. It is a preparation philosophy. And after 35 years of sitting across from students and families in this work, I am more convinced of that than ever.
Train up. Not prop up. Not pass along. Not inflate. TRAIN.

Training implies effort, on the part of the child, yes, but also on the part of every adult in that child’s life. The parent who asks the real questions. The teacher who holds the line. The counselor who tells the truth even when the truth is hard to hear. Training is not comfortable. It is not always kind in the moment. But it is always loving in the long run.

This series has been about a gap. The gap between what transcripts say and what students actually know; between state assessment scores and national measures. Between the confidence families feel walking into senior year and the reality that greets some students in their first college semester.

That gap is not the student’s fault. It is the outcome of a system that, with the best of intentions, chose comfort over truth. Chose the grade over the learning. Chose promotion over preparation.
Mississippi looked at that gap and decided to close it. It was hard. It was controversial. And it worked.

Your family can make the same decision; not as a state policy, but as a household conviction.

Proverbs 22:6 in practice looks like this:
It looks like a parent who sits down with an ACT score and doesn’t explain it away, but uses it as a starting point.

It looks like a student who chooses the harder course, not because it’s required, but because they understand that iron sharpens iron.

It looks like a family that plans early - 9th grade, 10th grade - rather than scrambling in the fall of senior year.

It looks like a counselor who tells you what your student needs to hear, not just what feels good in the moment.

It looks like preparation that is real, rigorous, and rooted in the belief that your child was made for more than coasting.

This is what Ryan College Bound exists to do.
Not to fill out applications. Not to chase trends. But to walk alongside families who believe that education is a calling. That training up a child is one of the most sacred responsibilities we have been given, and to make sure that when the moment of college arrives, your student is truly ready for it.

If this series has stirred something in you, if you’ve been wondering whether your student’s transcript is telling the real story, whether their ACT score reflects their ability, whether you still have time to change the trajectory - the answer is almost certainly yes. You have time. But the window closes earlier than families expect.

I would love to have that conversation with you! Let's talk.

(256) 577-6006
[email protected]
ryancollegebound.com
College Bound with Confidence®
Melissa Ryan, Ryan College Bound

Thank you for following The Real Story Behind the Transcript. It has been a privilege to share it with you.

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Post 6 of 7 | The Mississippi Miracle - Closer to Home

By now, most people in education have heard of the “Mississippi Miracle.”

In 2013, Mississippi ranked near the bottom of the nation in fourth-grade reading. In 2024, it ranked 7th, while facing some of the highest child poverty rates in the country, persistent teacher shortages, and below-average teacher pay.

That is not a typo. Near the bottom to 7th in ten years.
How? One clear, courageous policy decision: Mississippi passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013, which required that third graders who could not read at grade level be retained and given intensive support, rather than promoted and forgotten. The state also mandated phonics-based instruction, early screening, and placed trained literacy coaches in its lowest-performing schools.
They stopped pretending. And children started reading.

Now here’s where I want to be honest with you about Alabama, because honesty is the foundation of everything I do in this work.
Alabama has not had its own Mississippi Miracle. Our NAEP scores, the only truly independent national measure, show that 28% of Alabama fourth graders are reading at the proficient level. Our state assessments show a much higher number.

That gap between what our state assessment says and what the national measure says is exactly what I’ve been describing in this series. And it matters enormously when your student arrives at the University of Alabama, Auburn, Samford, South Alabama, UAB, UAH, or UNA and encounters expectations that don’t match the transcript they walked in with.

But here is what I find genuinely encouraging about Alabama, and I mean this:

Alabama has been one of the strongest academic comeback stories in the country since 2019. We ranked 49th in fourth-grade reading at the time. In 2024, we ranked 34th. Alabama and Louisiana were the only two states to exceed pre-COVID reading levels. That is real progress, earned through the Alabama Literacy Act, science-of-reading instruction, and summer reading camps for at-risk students.

Progress is real. It just isn’t finished. And 28% proficiency means we have a long way still to go.

So what does this mean for your family?
It means you cannot assume the transcript tells the full story. It means an ACT score is not the enemy, it is the honest mirror. And it means that when your student invests in real preparation, real mastery, and real academic rigor, they are not just chasing a number.

They are building something that holds.

Mississippi proved that when expectations are high and support is real, children rise, regardless of poverty, geography, or obstacles. Alabama is proving it too, one grade level at a time. Your student can rise as well.

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” — Proverbs 22:6

That verse isn’t just about faith formation. It’s about preparation that lasts. 🎓🙏

Next up - Post 7: Proverbs 22:6 in Practice - the conclusion of The Real Story Behind the Transcript.

S E R I E S • America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy • Post 5 of 7
What High Expectations Actually Look Like at Home📚

We’ve spent four posts talking about a hard truth: America is sliding toward illiteracy, grade inflation is masking the problem, and Alabama families are not immune. Today I want to be practical.

What do high expectations actually look like at home? I think that phrase gets misunderstood. High expectations do not mean pressure. They do not mean hovering. They do not mean turning your dinner table into a tutoring session. They mean something quieter and far more powerful.

📋 They mean you take the transcript seriously.
When your student brings home a 95 in a class, and you ask, “What did you learn?” rather than just “Great job!” that’s a high expectation. When a 4.0 comes with an ACT score that doesn’t match, you notice the gap rather than celebrate the GPA in isolation; that’s a high expectation. After 35 years of college counseling, I can tell you: the families whose students arrive most prepared are the ones who asked harder questions at home long before I ever met them.

🏆 They mean you value mastery over performance.
There is a difference between a student who learned to read well and a student who learned to perform well on reading assignments. One will thrive in college. One will struggle the moment the scaffolding of a familiar classroom is removed. High expectations at home mean we care whether our children actually understand, not just whether they turned in the work.

📖 They mean you protect reading time.
Not screen time. Not study hall. Actual reading-books, long-form articles, substantive content that requires sustained attention. The research behind The Atlantic’s findings is clear: the single most powerful predictor of reading proficiency is time spent reading for pleasure, consistently, over years. That habit is built at home, not at school. Are we modeling this behavior for our children?

🗣️ They mean you say the hard thing.
When a teacher tells your student everything is fine, and your gut says otherwise, trust your gut. When a grade doesn’t reflect what your student actually knows, say something. When the ACT score arrives, and it doesn’t match the report card, don’t explain it away. The families I work with who serve their children best are the ones willing to name a problem before it becomes a crisis.

I came across a newspaper article last night about the University of California System. More than 600 University of California faculty members, led by mathematicians at UC Berkeley, are calling on the system to reinstate SAT or ACT testing for STEM applicants beginning with the fall 2027 admissions cycle, warning that six years of test-free admissions have left professors teaching middle-school math to incoming college freshmen. This is the case across the country. Many northeastern and southeastern schools have already moved to require the tests for students applying this year. Test optional is on its deathbed!

High expectations are not the opposite of grace. They are a form of it. They say: “I believe you are capable of more, and I love you enough to say so.”

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6

Training requires standards. It requires someone who cares enough to hold the line, especially when holding it is uncomfortable. That’s what high expectations look like at home. Not perfection. Not pressure. Just loving your child enough to tell the truth.

Next week: Post 6 - The Mississippi Miracle, Closer to Home

📚 College Bound with Confidence
Melissa Ryan, Ryan College Bound
Florence, Alabama

🌞 What Does a Strong Summer Actually Look Like?
Real Examples by Interest Area

Last week I shared why summer is the most important season in the college admissions process. Today I want to make it practical.

One of the most common questions I hear from Alabama families is: “My student knows what they’re interested in, but what should they actually DO this summer?”

Here’s the answer I give after 35 years of watching what works: the best summer experiences are specific, initiative-driven, and connected to something your student genuinely cares about. They don’t have to be expensive or formal. They have to be real.

Here are concrete examples by field of interest:

🔬 STEM / ENGINEERING / COMPUTER SCIENCE
▪️ Build something: an app, a website, a robotics project, a coding tool that solves a real problem
▪️ Reach out to a local engineer, architect, or tech professional and ask to shadow them for a week
▪️ Complete a free online course in Python, CAD, or data science and apply it to a personal project
▪️ Enter a summer competition: science olympiad, hackathon, or engineering design challenge
Relevant for: Auburn Engineering, Georgia Tech, UAH, Texas A&M, UA
🧭 HEALTHCARE / PRE-MED / NURSING
▪️ Volunteer consistently at a local hospital, clinic, or assisted living facility - consistent means all summer, not twice
▪️ Shadow a physician, nurse practitioner, or physical therapist in a field that genuinely interests your student
▪️ Seek a paid or unpaid position at a pharmacy or medical office
▪️ Start or lead a health awareness initiative in your community or school
Relevant for: Samford Nursing, UAB Pre-Med, South Alabama, Emory, Vanderbilt

💼 BUSINESS / FINANCE / ENTREPRENEURSHIP
▪️ Start something: a small business, a service, a product, even a side hustle with a real customer
▪️ Seek an internship or job shadowing opportunity at a local business or financial firm
▪️ Read three serious books on business or economics and write about what you learned
▪️ Identify a problem in your community and develop a written business plan to address it
Relevant for: UA Culverhouse, Auburn Business, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Texas A&M

🎨 ARTS / MUSIC / CREATIVE FIELDS
▪️ Produce a body of work: a portfolio, a recorded EP, a short film, a collection of writing
▪️ Teach what you know: give lessons, lead a workshop, mentor younger students
▪️ Seek a community performance, exhibition, or publication opportunity
▪️ Collaborate with other artists on a project that results in something tangible
Relevant for: Belmont University, Samford, UA, Auburn

📚 EDUCATION / SOCIAL WORK / HUMANITIES
▪️ Tutor or mentor younger students in your community consistently, with measurable results
▪️ Design and lead a reading program, summer camp, or enrichment activity for kids
▪️ Volunteer with a nonprofit whose mission connects to your student’s values
▪️ Write: a blog, a community newsletter, a personal essay series on something that matters to you
Relevant for: UNA, UA Education, Samford, Ole Miss
🌎 ENVIRONMENT / AGRICULTURE / NATURAL RESOURCES
▪️ Work on a farm, at a nature center, or with a conservation organization
▪️ Launch a sustainability initiative at your school or in your neighborhood
▪️ Partner with a local university extension program or state agency on a research project
▪️ Document a local environmental issue through photography, writing, or data collection
Relevant for: Auburn Agriculture, Mississippi State, UA, Texas A&M

Notice what all of these have in common: your student is the one driving. They’re not sitting in a lecture hall at an expensive summer program waiting for something to happen to them. They’re making something happen.

Admissions officers at UA, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Emory, Georgia Tech, and Belmont are not impressed by a list of programs your family paid for. They are impressed by evidence that your student knows what they care about and had the initiative to pursue it.

That’s the summer story worth telling.
Not sure how to help your student find the right opportunity? That’s exactly what I do. Let’s talk before summer slips away.

📚 College Bound with Confidence
Melissa Ryan, Ryan College Bound
[email protected]
ryancollegebound.com
(256) 577-6006

☀️ Summer Isn’t a Break from College Prep. It’s the Main Event.

After 35 years of college counseling, I can tell you this with confidence: the students who land the best scholarships and write the strongest applications didn’t build their story during the school year. They built it in the summers.

Most Alabama families treat summer as a reward for surviving another school year. Admissions offices at UA, Auburn, Vanderbilt, Emory, and Georgia Tech treat it as evidence; evidence of who your student really is when no one is handing them an assignment.
Here’s what those summers should look like, grade by grade:

📍 AFTER 9TH GRADE - EXPLORE GENUINELY
This is not the summer to chase résumé builders. It’s the summer to follow real curiosity. Does your student love biology? Engineering? Working with kids? Let them pursue it, even informally. Admissions readers have been doing this long enough to know the difference between a student who did something because they wanted to and one who did it because a parent told them it would look good. Curiosity at 15 is more valuable than credentials.

📍 AFTER 10TH GRADE - GO DEEPER
By now, your student should have a sense of what genuinely interests them. This summer, the goal isn’t to add more activities; it’s to invest more meaningfully in one. Take on more responsibility. Build a real skill. Seek out an opportunity that requires initiative to find. This is also the summer to honestly assess academic gaps before junior year arrives. If the ACT score isn’t where it needs to be for UA’s Presidential Scholarship, Auburn’s Spirit of Auburn award, or Samford’s Crosland Scholarship, now is the time to address it, not October of 11th grade.

📍 AFTER 11TH GRADE - PRODUCE SOMETHING THAT MATTERS
This is the most consequential summer in the entire process, and I watch families underestimate it every single year. It is the last significant opportunity to do something meaningful before applications are written. What your student does this summer will directly shape what they have to say in their essays. Not a program someone else designed and handed to them, something they initiated, created, led, or built. Admissions officers at Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Texas A&M, UAB, and UAH are reading thousands of applications. The ones that stand out belong to students who did something real.

📍 SENIOR FALL- PROTECT YOUR FOCUS
The doing is behind you. Senior fall is application season. Now the work is translating everything your student has built into essays that are honest, specific, and genuinely theirs. The activities list should tell a coherent story. The essays should bring it to life. This is not the time to start a new club or volunteer once at a food bank. Admissions readers notice that too.

Whether your student is aiming for honors programs at UA or UAH, the nursing program at Samford or South Alabama, pre-med at Emory or Vanderbilt, music business at Belmont, or engineering at Georgia Tech or Auburn — the students who stand out in those applicant pools share one thing in common: they used their summers with intention.

Thirty-five years of watching this process has convinced me that summer is one of the only stretches of time in a teenager’s life with enough space to pursue something with real depth. That’s exactly why colleges pay attention to it.

If you’re not sure whether your student is using the summer well, let’s talk. That’s exactly what I’m here for.

📚 College Bound with Confidence
Melissa Ryan, Ryan College Bound
[email protected]
ryancollegebound.com
((256) 577-6006
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Post 4: The Cost of Coasting

Nobody talks about what happens next.

A student graduates with a 4.0, a comfortable class rank, and a sense that they are ready. They arrive at UA, Auburn, or Samford in August. And then, sometimes within the first semester, the floor gives way.

The professor doesn’t remind them about the test. Nobody accepts late work. There are no retakes. The curve they counted on isn’t there. And the ACT score that felt fine in high school turns out to have been a warning sign nobody took seriously.

This is the cost of coasting. And it is far higher than most families realize.

Here are the numbers that matter:

Students who arrive underprepared are often placed in remedial coursework, classes they pay full tuition for that earn no college credit. Merit scholarships at most Alabama universities require students to maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Lose the scholarship after freshman year, and it rarely comes back. A student who takes five years to finish a four-year degree pays an average of one additional year of tuition, housing, and lost income. The financial cost of unpreparedness is not abstract. It is tens of thousands of dollars.

But the cost I think about most is not financial.

It is the student who believed they were ready, because every signal around them said they were, and then experienced the shock and shame of discovering they weren’t. That moment is hard to recover from. It shakes confidence at exactly the age when confidence is most fragile.

Galatians 6:7 says: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

This is not a harsh verse. It is a merciful one. Because it means the opposite is also true, those who sow diligence, preparation, and honest effort will reap accordingly. The law of the harvest does not play favorites. It simply responds to what was planted.

Grade inflation plants a false seed. It tells a student they have sown when they haven’t. And the harvest, when it comes, tells the truth.

The families I work with who avoid this outcome all have one thing in common: they asked the hard questions early. Is my student actually learning this material? Does their ACT score match their GPA? Are they being challenged? Are we being honest?

Those questions, asked in 9th or 10th grade, change everything.

It is never too early to prepare well. But it can absolutely become too late. 🎓🙏

P.S. I know I have spoken very directly to you in the previous couple of posts. My intention is not to scare you or intimidate you. My sole purpose is to speak truth to you and hopefully avoid the pitfalls that can shatter your child's dreams. That is one thing you can count on from me - I will always speak the truth to you as I know it.

Best,
Melissa Ryan



Ryan College Bound | Melissa Ryan, IEC
[email protected]
ryancollegebound.com
(256) 577-6006

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So here we are! The kids are out of school for the summer. Woohoo!!! I truly cannot believe it; what an incredibly fast year it has been.

I started a series a few weeks ago, but got sidetracked by other pressing issues. Sorry, everyone, that is who I am. 😂

Post 3: The ACT Is Not the Enemy

I hear it all the time.

“My student is just not a good test taker.”
“We’re not going to worry about the ACT- a lot of schools are test-optional now.”
“One test shouldn’t define my child.”

I understand every one of those feelings. And I want to gently, lovingly push back on all of them.

The ACT is not the enemy. In fact, for Alabama families, it may be one of the greatest financial opportunities your student will ever have.

Here is the reality: the major universities in our state - UA, Auburn, UAB, UAH, Samford, UNA- still use ACT scores as one of the primary drivers of merit scholarship eligibility. We are talking about the difference between $4,000 a year and $28,000 a year. We are talking about the difference between graduating debt-free and carrying a loan into your twenties. A few points on the ACT can mean tens of thousands of dollars over four years.

Test-optional does not mean test-irrelevant. It means that if a student submits a score, it will be considered. And at most schools, a strong score still opens doors that nothing else can.

I also want to say this: the ACT is a learnable test. It is not purely a measure of raw intelligence. It is a measure of preparation, strategy, and disciplined practice. I have watched students raise their scores significantly, not because they got smarter, but because they did the work.

Which brings me to this.

In Luke 16:10, Jesus says: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.”

The ACT is, in many ways, a test of stewardship. It is asking: Will you prepare? Will you show up? Will you do the small, unglamorous work of practice tests, grammar rules, and math review, faithfully, consistently, over time?

The students I have seen succeed are not always the most naturally gifted. They are the ones who treated preparation as a responsibility and showed up anyway.

If your student has not yet taken the ACT, or if their score does not yet reflect what they are capable of, please hear this: it is not too late. But the window does not stay open forever. Freshman and sophomore years are the time to begin building. Junior year is the time to perform.

Don’t leave money, or opportunity on the table. 💰🎓🙏



Let's talk!

[email protected]
ryancollegebound.com
256-577-6006

Call now to connect with business.

What is a college education really worth?

So much of the current conversation around higher education is focused on a single question: Does college pay off financially? It’s an important question, and one I take seriously as a college consultant. But after 35 years of walking alongside families through this decision, I’m convinced that the financial return on investment, while real, is only a small part of the story.

The deepest goods of a college education are the ones that resist a price tag.

It is the formation of judgment, learning to weigh evidence, hold competing ideas in tension, and change one’s mind for good reasons. It is the encounter with people unlike ourselves during a developmentally crucial window. It is exposure to a tradition of thought far larger than the present moment, which gives a young person somewhere to stand when cultural winds shift. It is the cultivation of curiosity as a lifelong habit rather than a passing phase. It is the friendships, the mentors, and, for students of faith, the chance to think seriously about what they believe and why in conversation with people who challenge and sharpen them.

There is also a civic dimension we rarely talk about. A healthy community depends on citizens who can read carefully, argue in good faith, and recognize manipulation. Those capacities do not develop on their own.

Here is what I have come to believe: the intrinsic and the financial are not as opposed as the current discourse suggests. The student who develops genuine intellectual seriousness, who learns to write clearly and think rigorously, who builds relationships across difference -that student tends to do well economically too, just not in ways a four-year payback calculation can capture. The deeper goods often produce the surface goods as a byproduct.

The danger of optimizing only for what we can measure is that we sometimes end up with neither. A purely transactional view of college tends to produce graduates who are credentialed but not formed, and the world eventually notices.

So when families sit down with me to talk about fit, I want us to ask the harder questions alongside the financial ones: Who do you want to become? What kind of mind do you want to have at 30, at 50, at 70? What habits of heart and thought will sustain you long after the loans are paid off?

Those questions cost nothing to ask - and everything to ignore.

Melissa Ryan
Ryan College Bound | Florence, Alabama

High school teachers should consider some variation of this.

Perfect homework, blank stares: Why colleges are turning to oral exams to combat AI A growing number of U.S. college instructors are turning to oral exams to help combat an AI crisis in higher education.