ramblinwreck.com
Over the years I have said the Venn diagram of people who could pull off a bachelor's degree in engineering at Tech while playing D1 football represents the very top of the food chain...the apex predators (great white sharks, tigers, grizzly bears, etc.) if you will. This guy is in unchartered territory imo. This is a T Rex walking amongst us.Inside The Chart: Class Of His Own
Even at an elite engineering school like GT, Henry Freer is doing something with no known precedent
@DeepSnap is being a long snapper easy enough of a job to pursue a PHD at the same time?
The story says he came into Tech with 33 credit hours from high school and he's getting an extra year because of the Covid year 2020. I guess that's how you do it.
And Stetson still hasn't gotten an undergrad.
Inside The Chart: Class Of His Own
Even at an elite engineering school like GT, Henry Freer is doing something with no known precedent
@DeepSnap is being a long snapper easy enough of a job to pursue a PHD at the same time?
Busy and smart. My brain hurts just thinking about it.
If I remember correctly, Jaylon King graduated with a Civil Engineering degree, so count him among those. A PhD playing D1 football is insane too!
Inside The Chart: Class Of His Own
Even at an elite engineering school like GT, Henry Freer is doing something with no known precedent
@DeepSnap is being a long snapper easy enough of a job to pursue a PHD at the same time?
We had guys - Bruce Rutherford to Stanford, Meade Sutterfield to Harvard, Ronnie Parise to GT MechEngr Grad school, Jack O'Neill to Med School just to list a few - go on to Grad School, but nothing like #46 is doing.I had a couple of EE classes with Herman Lamm around 1972 or 73. Pretty sure Ellis Gardner was EE with highest GPA when he graduated. There was some sort of plaque on a wall in the EE building for Gardner. Impressive!!!!
Henry did his math and figured out how to apply for a PhD program. He had 30 AP college credits coming out of Woodward Academy in College Park. His ACT was the highest possible at 35, putting him in the 99th percentile of all students everywhere. Georgia Tech's average ACT score is 33, with Harvard's being 34. Henry is in the top 1% of all college students. He graduated with a BS in May 2023, with this season and next year eligibility to play football. He used three years eligibility when he graduated Tech. He applied for PhD admission at Tech in his BS field. At Tech, a masters is not required to be accepted into a PhD program. What counts is his past academic record, his courses in research, and his professors recommendations. He can apply for PhD candidacy after taking 3 semesters past his BS, earliest being fall of 2024, his last season of eligibility for football. Then, at his rate of progression, he could be called Dr. Henry Freer with a PhD in Chemical & Bio Molecular Engineering about 4 years from now. He is the poster child of the Georgia Tech Student-Athlete and of the traditions and culture of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He fits into the tradition of another College Park-Georgia Tech student-athlete Bill Curry. We will hear much more about Henry Freer long after Tech.
Many PhD programs today accept students with a BS/BA and the first year of his/her graduate program is considered his/her Masters level work. If the student does not progress into the doctoral research, he/she can exit the program with a Masters degree. It's a pretty nice option to fall back on, though Henry won't need that. Not sure if this is Tech's arrangement or not.
.
We travelled similar paths my friend. it was in Atlanta, being from the sticks and at the tender age of 18, that I learned that I was able to resist just about everything but temptation.. He was either at some sort of practice or he was studying, unlike yours truly who followed the "anything more than a 2.0 is wasted effort" approach - $1.25 pitchers at nearby bars didn't help either.
Dave Frakes, kicker during the mid-90s, has a PhD.
DeepSnap, it is quite evident that you and I know each other and ate many meals for four years at Twiggs Tavern, also known as the training table. And went to many study halls together 5 nights a week. I was one of those scholarship basketball players who was told what my major would be and for the most part what classes I would take. That was a good idea because I had never heard of calculus until I had to take it my first semester. We did have algebra in my southwest Georgia high school though, and I was the valedictorian of my senior class of 35. I was very proud of graduating in 12 quarters with a 2.6 GPA, or the Army would have drafted me like they did basketball letterwinner Tommy Bowling , who heeded one quarter to graduate, was drafted, and earned the silver star, bronze star, and purple heart in Vietnam. He came back in 1973 and graduated. I was one of those lucky ones who had a low draft lottery number and had to remain in ROTC for four years and then had full ride to join the army with real money, and very happy to get that. Jobs were scarce in 1972. Footballers Meade and Herman are good friends still today, as well as baseballers Mike Sorrow and Cam Bonifay and footballer and trackster Brent Cunningham . All us scholarship athletes got to know each other since we all ate together most every meal. We were very fortunate as Georgia Tech student athletes to know all the other athletes (and cheerleadersDr. Herman Lam graduated in June 1972 with a 3.8 in EE & last seen was a Computer Science prof at U of Florida in Gainesville. As one of my old roomies Meade Sutterfield, a 3.4 BSEE grad & Harvard MBA says, Herman played FB or ran track and studied. That's it. He was either at some sort of practice or he was studying, unlike yours truly who followed the "anything more than a 2.0 is wasted effort" approach - $1.25 pitchers at nearby bars didn't help either.
We did indeed have a lot of IMs...... most wannabe engineer S-As found Bud Carson's then-unlimited practice & meeting time incompatible with high academic prowess. But we did have our share of Civil & Industrial Engineers.
ROTC was another time eater. Only so many hours counted toward graduation, but it ate three hours in the classroom & one on the drill field every week just like a chem lab. Another roomie, a 3.2 IE GT grad & Harvard MBA, had his roughest go with AF ROTC classes.
Obviously time management was the major takeaway, not the actual knowledge derived from my major, Textiles Management.
) and to maintain lifetime friends and acquaintances. My above average GPA of 2.6 prepared me for earning three more advanced degrees since then, now retired from the Army and from the defense industry corporate world.Scotton worked at IBM in RTP same time I was working there. Never ran across him personally. If he is still there he must have over 40 years with IBM.
