He's on his way here to stay for 5 days... We'll exchange philosophies, as we always do... and he'll tell me about his summer readings... and there'll be a battle of the wits... and I'll lose. Three years ago, he wanted to be governor, last year, a neurosurgeon, this year, probably a sociologist, and by this time next year, an organizer in OWS.
Life is good... if you don't weaken.
Doesn't matter what you think about his college choices! I think the best thing you can do is help him plot out the selection approach so that he can figure out the criteria later and then apply them during the process.
Work it backwards from the start of senior year. Most applications are due by the end of the calendar year (first semester senior year) and the guidance counselors/teachers are swamped with paperwork/recommendations. (Some applications are due in October.) So he wants to make up his mind up by the end of junior year-- spend the summer filing applications and writing essays and pursuing recommendation letters-- and have five or six applications filed by September.
That means he wants to spend the summer before senior year visiting the colleges on his short list. The best way to do that is one-week in-residence programs (for science or engineering or liberal arts) run by plenty of the college's professors & students. He's there to check out the college, but they're there to check out him. It's far better than the high-school counselor because the profs can show him the cool lab gear and talk about his interests. The college students can talk about their interests and how they made their decisions. Most importantly of all, by the end of the week he'll be able to look around the campus and say "Yeah, I can do this" or "Eh, not my people". The cost of one or two of these summer programs is insignificant compared to the cost of a semester's false start.
The summer before
junior year is when he visits 3-5 campuses for day trips. This can be problematic because he's probably turning 16 years old that year, which may mean that he'd rather focus on driver's ed and license exams. Some of these campus visits might have to happen during fall break of junior year or spring break of sophomore year. You can't expect much from these campus field trips because they're only for him to learn how to ask the questions, figure out what's important to him, and gain some confidence in his search skills. It's usually a morning presentation, maybe attending a freshman class with a student, lunch on campus, and another class or sports in the afternoon. If you have time then it'd be great for him to spend a night or a weekend in the dorm (while the parents tactfully disappear). By the time they've spent 24 hours with college profs & freshmen they'll have learned far more about their selection criteria than you or the high-school counselor can ever offer.
The summer before sophomore year is a good time to visit whatever campus is within a 30-minute drive. Take the tour, do whatever they offer, see how he likes it. It's just to get familiar with the tour & questions routine so that they can own the process instead of letting Mom & Dad do the heavy lifting. Treat it as an experiment, a learning experience, and a chance to ogle hot college chicks. Your grandson can also attend college fairs during that summer and during sophomore year so that they can chat about the choices with their friends, see all the colleges that are a far-away expensive trip, and collect a lot of cool swag.
Our daughter spent summer before her junior year learning how to drive, so college trips were off the table. We did her college tours during the summer before
sophomore year, and that helped a lot. By the time she was choosing her high school AP classes, she knew what she'd need for college validation. Then during the fall break of junior year we visited the college that she's attending now. She'd seen enough college campuses before that trip to know that she'd found "the one" within 10 minutes of setting foot inside the gates. The rest was just hardening her confirmation bias.
Our daughter agonized over the choice between a service academy (USNA) and ROTC. Her week at USNA's "Summer Seminar" program helped her decide to pursue NROTC. The first two years of a service academy are free (no obligation) and the first year of ROTC is free (no obligation). If your grandson has even a casual interest in the military, then this is the time to figure out whether it's what he wants to do. One of my daughter's classmates actually dropped out of college (and the NROTC unit) during sophomore year, volunteered for the submarine force, and is now a machinist's mate on an attack boat. He knew college wasn't for him, but he'd seen enough to land on his feet instead of doing shifts at Taco Bell while living at home with Mom & Dad.
CNC machining still needs someone to input what is to be made into the computer (as does 3d printing) The days of someone actually guiding a lathe or milling machine to make something are long gone. Today one needs computer skills as much as machining skills, (and thus more math training).
I wonder where one would find an old school training program now days anyway at a community college.
It's still kinda hard to fit a CNC box down the hatch of a submarine, but those old-school lathes are essential to fixing pump shafts and a host of other broken gear...