<p>i started working when i was 16, and i took a high school diploma exam (like a CHSPE) and stopped going to HS junior year and i got into all three UCs i applied to (UCB, UCLA, UCSB) and am waiting from my top choice, USC.</p>
<p>I thought I was the only CHSPE dropout on this board amongst all the HS overachievers. I started community college in the summer after 9th grade as a cross-enrollment student, and liked it so much in comparison to my high school that I took the CHSPE the following year and dropped out of HS after 10th grade. I don't regret it because I had a much wider range of classes to choose from in CC that matched my interests, and my HS had barely 2 AP classes and mostly assigned us mindless busy work. I didn't think I had much of a chance getting into a university I liked if I applied as a freshman, and I was bored out of my skull by HS classes, so I thought transferring was the better option overall. Of course, I never would have expected all the stuff in between to happen, since it's taken 8 years since I first started to attend CC. Now UCLA has admitted me for this fall, so I guess it didn't hurt me in the long run.</p>