Homeschooled Student Worrying to Death. Help??

Pre-College Issues Home Schooling and College
1

Hi,

So I am a current Junior attending Acellus Academy, an online accredited high school based in Kansas City. I live in Illinois. I am a 4.0 student who started off at a public school in Illinois. I decided to move to Europe for 3 months, so I moved to Germany. While gone, my school promised to treat the study abroad as simply studying abroad, basically keeping me from having to worry about making up any work and to enjoy my time abroad. When I returned from Germany, it turned out they did the exact opposite as promised and made me fail every single class and gave me only 2 weeks to catch everything up before the semester ended. I was forced to transfer my freshman credits to Acellus, and am now on pace to graduate over a year early. I am currently taking 3 AP classes and am taking my SAT in March 2018. I have it somehow implanted in me that I will not be successful in life unless I attend Stanford, UC Berkeley, or an Ivy League school, so therefore I am forcing myself to worry about all of my studying and feel like I will hate myself if I don’t get into a great school. I just want to see some guidance on how I could be happy with a lesser-selective school. I am also debating whether to take community college classes now and transfer an entire associate’s degree or to wait and apply to a four-year solely. Help?

2

Do you HAVE to graduate this year? Could you dual enroll as a senior next year to fill out your transcript?

You can do all the right things and still not get into an Ivy League. It will be even harder to get in if you’re young because you haven’t had as much time to build up your transcript and extra-curriculars. I’d try to fall in love with some safety schools - financial and academic. Especially if you are applying to colleges to graduate a year early.

3

You should un-implant that notion…quickly, because it’s not true.

4

I have the option of extending my graduation to as far as May 2019, but I thought it might seem more impressive to colleges for them to see that I graduated a whole year early.

5

Please don’t rush to graduation because it seems impressive. Do it only if you have clearly run out of interesting work to do in your current educational situation.

Admitting a younger than average student is a risk. Your application has to address not only your academic readiness, but also whether or not you are worth that risk. It’s an extra hurdle to get over.

6

Colleges do not see early graduation as impressive.

You also need to step out of the “elite required for success” bubble. It is a false premise. It is a big world out there with many paths toward goals and successful careers.