on the scholarships aspect-I can give you a piece of advice about something you can start doing now that will be tremendously helpful when he starts applying for them (as well as to colleges). start making a list of EVERYTHING he has done or accomplished-sports, clubs, volunteer work, academic honors, paid employment....also, if he's gotten any awards that issued paper certificates (or programs from special select events-like in my dd's case a select bi-county choir, and w/some of her friends state competitions for sports), make copies of them and start putting them into a folder. the same if he's done any volunteer or paid work and can get a letter outlining it (and ideally saying what a good job he did). if he has any coaches/teachers that might not be around during his senior year (close to retirement) go ahead and get letters of reference/recommendation for scholarships (the person writing can explain that they are writing it now b/c they will be retiring but they wanted to ensure they put their positive impressions of the student in writing to support their applications).
you are SO right-there are lots of smart and athletic kids today. also lots of kids that do every extracurricular in the hopes it will give them the edge on scholarship applications. having the kind of information I've mentioned can help when it comes time to start filling out scholarship applications-and you can start looking now to see what kind of criteria both your ds's high school, independent groups, and the colleges he may consider put forth b/c he's early enough in high school to be able to do more in one area if that's held in esteem for selection criteria.
as for looking at colleges now-not much experience on this (dd knew where she wanted to go early on), but I will say that shouldn't stop you from making informal calls to the colleges he's thinking of and asking questions. a call to admissions can determine if they anticipate any major changes in their application, attendance or graduation criteria for the years your ds would begin applying and subsequently attending. someone calling dd's university a couple of years ago would have learned that beginning last year all freshman were mandated to live on campus for their first year of attendance. a call this year would have them finding out that a large project the student body voted in will be increasing fees by hundreds of dollars per quarter starting this fall. a call to the college's financial aid department can result in speaking to an advisor who can explain that individual institution's procedure to apply (at dd's the cut-off for application for the following school year is the prior february and you can't apply unless you've received acceptance so it's important to apply early during the last year of high school).
