<p>So the first two years of high school, my attendance was awful. I missed so much school that I only earned 1.5 credits and eventually I "dropped out" during my sophomore year. I decided that I should go back to school so I enrolled in an alternative school where I only need 24 credits to graduate. However, do to my lack of credits, I won't be graduating until 2016 at the earliest. One option I had in mind was dropping out, taking the GED test, and then attending a local community college. I don't currently know my GPA, the last time I checked at my previous school it was around 0.3, but I don't know how that changed since I am attending a different school now and I am pretty much restarting high school. What is the best thing I can do in order for me to attend a decent college? I would really like to attend a college like the University of Chicago but that seems out of reach now since I screwed up so badly. My life is in a really big mess right now and I just don't know what to do. There are no sports programs or anything like that at my current school but I am currently getting A's in all of my classes. I am also attending a local trade school, which takes up half of my day. I am taking a computer networking class there and by the end of the school year I should have like Linux Essentials certification and maybe some other certifications. All in all, what should I do?</p>
<p>keep on working first of all, i know this situation is tricky and might even be discouraging at times but you need to keep moving forward and not get put down</p>
<p>i really am not qualified or knowledgeable to answer your question but here is my 2 cents…i would advise you not to look at top tier schools like uchicago, that is just too much of a stretch and getting a rejection letter can set off many students into a downward spiral</p>
<p>that being said there are many great colleges out there where you will succeed besides those top tier schools, look at schools that are accepting of situations like yours, do some research on it and best of luck</p>
<p>Stay at your high school at least till the end of the year, and make sure to get all A’s. If you want to enroll in community college, you need to have discipline and show that you can do very well. In addition, next semester, enroll at the community college as a high school student. Take just one class. See how that goes. Then, make your decision about staying at the high school or getting your GED and attending the community college full time. And if you do very well at your current high school, could you attend a “regular” high school next year and prepare for college there?
Attending the university of Chicago is almost impossible for most people - the odds are 1:10 even for great students (so… 9:10 to get rejected). It’s not enough to have a 4.0, you need to have awards etc. However there are lots of colleges between UChicago and community college. If you like Chicago, what about Roosevelt, DePaul, Elmhurst? There’s Northwestern also (totally different from UChicago though).
Try to find Insider’s guide into colleges or Fiske Guide or Princeton Review’s best colleges, and put post it notes next to the colleges you like. Then fill out the “request information” form on their website and start thinking about how to get there.</p>