College 2 years early?

<p>I'm a freshman in highschool now, but if I get all of my credits with the respective APs and Honors courses, could I possibly attend college at age 16 (I don't mean community college). Thanks! I would like to become a pediatrician or dentist and I don't want my entire 20s to be school so I'd like to start college at 16 (junior year for most) and then take summer semesters so i can get my Bachelors hopefully at 18 or 19 and finish Med School at 23 instead of 26, so i can begin working professionally at 25 or 26 opposed to like 29. Thanks :)</p>

<p>I’m not sure if that’s even possible to go to a university full-time for school. You can take AP in high school but HS is not like college. You can’t take more than a certain amount of credits in high school like you can in college. </p>

<p>And besides it usually takes about 8 years to complete all the college education you need to become a licensed pediatrician or Dentist so you can still finish in your early to mid-20s. You’d be surprised at how many people start their careers even 4 year degrees at that time. </p>

<p>Talk to your school counselor and see if they have any advice. </p>

<p>Yes, I understand. I meant if I was to graduate at 15 by taking online courses via FLVS and then start college the fall of 2015 which would regularly be my junior year. And yea for college I would take 18-20 credits a semester and do summer too. Pediatrician requires 11 years undergrad-med-residency and I don’t want to wait until I’m virtually 30 to do things as general as paying off student loans. </p>

<p>Your post didn’t make much sense to me. Taking AP and honors classes doesn’t earn you extra high school credits or accelerate your high school graduation (at least not in any school I’m familiar with). Are you saying that you want to graduate after 2 years of high school? I doubt that it’s possible to get enough credits by then unless you are already exceptionally advanced. It might be possible to graduate in 3 years. You’d have to talk to the school administration and see if you can meet the requirements. You’d probably have to start planning for that now, to fit in all the required courses. It may also be possible to attend certain colleges without having received a high school diploma, but I really wouldn’t recommend this unless you have some extraordinary circumstances. In any case you should keep in mind that med school admissions are very competitive and skipping years of high school and/or college is going to put you at a disadvantage. Also, you need to take certain college classes for med school and you will have to work with how those are scheduled, and also consider when you would be prepared to take the MCAT. My guess is that your idea is unrealistic, but try talking to your counselor about it. Also learn exactly what is required for med school admissions.</p>

<p>I’m aware about the whole AP and Honors thing, but I know colleges are usually skeptical when accepting young applicants and I’d like to take those classes to get into the best school possible. And I’d do many courses via FLVS! </p>

<p>Med School requires the Pre-med requisites which can be attained within a Bachelors degree in 120 credits. </p>

<p>I would add that med schools are wary of admitting younger students because frankly younger students lack the maturity and life experience to really know if they will stick with medicine. Med schools don’t want to invest in a young but bright student just to have that person realize that they don’t want to do it anymore</p>

<p>But it’s not impossible right? If I was to have a good college GPA and good MCAT scores?</p>

<p>It may be possible to speed things up like this. My husband did his undergrad in 3 years. His AP classes helped with that. He was able to complete med school in 4, then residency. Just take it day by day. See how it goes. Many people start college at age 16. Just do what you have to do. </p>

<p>And Med School later or not, Undergrad is available to everyone so could I even just finish Undergrad early and go back to Med School later? </p>

<p>Thanks researchperson :)</p>

<p>You’re going to need a stellar GPA and MCAT scores, as well as clinical and research experience, to make yourself a competitive applicant to most medical schools. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to work twice as hard or be an even better applicant than most because of your age. Rushing through school isn’t going to give you much time to have anything besides a GPA and MCAT scores, and even if those are fantastic, that’s not enough for most medical schools. Even if you graduated everything when you said you were going to graduate, I’d still recommend you take a couple of gap years to build a stronger application, make sure medicine is really for you, and gain a little perspective and maturity.</p>

<p>So do whatever you want, but make sure you have a plan B if it doesn’t all pan out the way you want it to.</p>

<p>I still don’t see how you are going to get a high school diploma in just 2 years. Even our most basic diploma (and that’s really for kids who aren’t going to college) requires 22 credits. Is that something you are going to finish next year? Does your freshman year record stand on its own, because that’s mostly what colleges would have to look at. Have you signed up to take the SAT and have you studied enough to have some idea of what your score might be so that you can start researching appropriate colleges? </p>

<p>Is there a compelling reason why you need to leave high school so soon? There are kids who are so precocious they really can’t benefit much from being in high school any longer, and there are some colleges who are willing to take them, but such kids are pretty rare, and you haven’t mentioned anything like that.</p>

<p>If being in school so long is a problem for you, perhaps you should consider a less educationally-demanding career. Also, have you considered how you are going to pay for all of this? You’re probably throwing away your chance of getting college scholarships if you do this, and med school isn’t cheap.</p>

<p>Given that you are a second-semester HS freshman, and that you said on another thread that you have a 2.2 GPA from your first semester after failing bio, I think your parents should take away your electronics, so you can focus on your studies.</p>

<p>I’d be taking classes over the summer and will take classes at my local 4 year probably the first year of college (I plan on majoring in humanities so I’ll take the non-premed prereqs there). I really just want to graduate early and start my career as early as possible. As far as school payment, I’m not sure. Being in school isn’t a problem for me I would just prefer to start earlier and gain more experience and expertise in the field. Also, if I graduate early, if I was to take out student loans, they would be payed off earlier. </p>

<p>Taking 18-20 hours a semester is a death sentence. </p>

<p>Also, if you actually got a 2.2 GPA your first semester of freshman year… you need to rethink your priorities. College and med school shouldn’t even be considered until your Junior Year (maybe end of Sophomore). </p>

<p>If you can’t balance 4? 7? classes now, you can’t expect to balance 18-20 hours (6-7 core science classes with labs) and maintain a 3.7+ GPA. </p>

<p>Put this forum, and college thoughts aside. You know what you need to do to get into college (raise that GPA…), med school comes later. </p>

<p>Wait so, you failed high school freshman bio, but you think you are just going to waltz in two years early to college? What kind of college do you think will accept you as a sophomore with a 2.2 GPA? Then you think you are going to take a very demanding/overload type schedule with summer school, and you will somehow maintain a very high GPA, much higher than in high school, despite being so young, despite taking so many credits? What makes you think you can do this when you are already having trouble as a high school freshman? You are just getting started and school is only going to get harder from where you are now. </p>

<p>Your plan also means that you won’t have time for all the hospital work and medical research your competitors will be spending their summers on, and yet you think you will be selected for med school? Sorry, but I think you’re being completely unrealistic. Do some more research on what it takes to get into med school, not the credit hours required, that is the easy part, but the records of successful applicants. </p>

<p>I failed freshman bio first semester because I didn’t do the project because my mom told my brother and I we were moving that week. The project was worth 50% and I had exactly a 50% in Biology so you can fill in the blanks. </p>

<p>If you read the entire post you may have seen that I was doing poorly due to things going on with family and lack of stability, not my understanding of the subject matter or test scores.</p>

<p>Also, I said I would complete my first 50ish credits at my local state college. </p>