<p>Hey,
I’m currently a junior and I’m going to be attending Columbia next year. :)</p>
<p>I never planned on graduating early; it just so happened that I did. In fact, I didn’t actually decide to graduate early until this past summer when upon reviewing all my course work I discovered that I had no math classes to take junior or senior year and would take most of the AP classes offered by my school junior year (I have enough AP credits to graduate from college a year early too haha), leaving no classes for me to take senior year except for AP English. I also had taken all my SAT tests sophomore year. Also for extracurriculars, I already had several leadership positions, won various awards, and volunteered over 300 hours by the beginning of junior year so I certainly wasn’t lacking in that area either.</p>
<p>I would definitely NOT recommend graduating early for the simple sake for graduating early. I would only recommend it if you’re really bored in high school or you are desperately seeking a change of environment. Being younger in the college admissions game does give you an advantage; it will only make it much more difficult for you to get into a top school as colleges are wary of junior applicants because they are usually not as mature as regular applicants and thus fail out at a higher rate.</p>