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Posted by Matt Erickson on December 17, 2012 at 3:28 p.m.

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Topeka high-schooler blogging for New York Times deciding among KU, other colleges

Leobardo Espinoza Jr. is a high-school senior in Topeka and is preparing to be a first-generation college student in his family, helped by a school program adopted a few years back especially for students in just such a situation. That alone makes his college choice pretty interesting, but there's also the fact that he's one of eight high schoolers blogging about their college choice process for the New York Times this school year.

Making that even more interesting for our purposes is that one of the schools he's considering is KU, so this should present an interesting opportunity to see why KU does or doesn't appear to be the right fit for at least one student (a pretty bright one, if his entries are any indication).

In an entry from last week, he mentions two schools he's visited: KU, which he says is 20 minutes form his home, and Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., a liberal-arts college with about 1,800 students some 1,500 miles away.

The two schools present marked contrasts on two issues about which he's conflicted: the size of the campus, and proximity to his home.

Improving recruitment is a big focus for KU right now, and this could be an interesting glimpse at how the university presents itself to a prospective student. Or, perhaps he'll just decide he doesn't want to live in Kansas anymore. We'll see.