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Leah Seupersad, 404-413-1354
University Relations
ATLANTA - When Jalen Jones opened his Georgia State University acceptance letter he shouted, danced and proclaimed to the world, “I don’t need any more colleges. I’m done. I’ve got my college!”
Jones’s acceptance reaction was filmed by his mom and posted to Facebook and YouTube. This week, the video has more than 1,600 views.
“Once my mom pulled out that acceptance letter I was done. I can’t even describe the feeling,” said the 17-year-old senior at Kennesaw Mountain High School. “I did not expect it at all. I had been waiting on the acceptance letter, but I didn’t think I was going to get it for maybe a month or two afterwards.”
Jones said he was in “shock and awe” after his parents told him to come straight home for a family meeting, but instead dropped his GSU acceptance letter on the kitchen counter.
“I was trying to think what I had done, possibly not taken out the trash or something,” he said.
Jones got another surprise Friday when Pounce showed up at his doorstep to thank him for his excitement, along with a host of students from GSU’s presidential ambassador program.
Jones had only applied to two colleges, but Georgia State’s strong School of Music and music technology major made the university his top choice. Jones said he has a passion for music and has been a member and student leader in his school’s Chamber Chorus ever since middle school.
“I want to be a music producer when I grow up so that was the only major I was looking for, and I needed to stay in Georgia,” Jones said.
Tina and Jay Jones said they knew their son would be excited about the letter since it had only been a few days since Tina talked to him about not “putting all of his eggs into one basket” and that he should maybe start applying to other schools.
“Around two days later we received the envelope and I said, ‘Wow,’” Tina Jones said. “We were excited and we knew he would be excited, but I don’t know if we knew he would be that excited. We just thought we would shoot the video.”
The Jones family is glad they were able to capture his reaction on video. Jalen posted the video to his Facebook page and a former nanny in North Carolina, who is now a teacher, asked to use the video to motivate her students.
“It’s an exciting time for us. We do everything together as a family and we all wanted to share in this joy when he actually opened up the letter,“ Tina Jones said. “My purpose of sharing this video is to encourage students, parents and others to motivate their children to not only to attend college, but make Georgia State University their first choice.”
And he’s not the least bit embarrassed by his acceptance video reaction. He’s truly excited to be going to college as a Georgia State Panther.
“Besides my parents encouraging me to go to college, I knew that if you want to go somewhere in your life you have to go to college nowadays and you have to get some experience,” Jones said. “I knew that college was the only path that I wanted to take.”
March 12, 2012
