I recently went to an Ivy League university fair, and asked about what the general view of early high school graduates (3 instead of 4 years) is in application departments. They said that since such a student wouldn’t have had a chance to develop holistic ‘soft skills’ as thoroughly as a normal graduate, that this generally counts against applicants. Is this correct, or just one adcom’s opinion?
Aside from repeating classes I’ve already taken, there isn’t any reason for me to remain in high school for another year, since I’ve already taken every STEM-related class offered (I’m very STEM focused) and another year would just be piling on a bunch of irrelevant classes well past the credit requirement for graduation. I’m even already taking intro to calculus and intro to chemistry (first year university) right now at a local university because I just had no more high school courses to take and didn’t want to sit around for a year (which is probably what another year would be).
You can continue to take dual enrollment credits before high school graduation. The only problem is that it would be hard to engage in high school activities at the same time unless the college is near your high school.
The admission officer was being honest with you. You probably realize that tippy top colleges look for more than just grades and test scores. Leaving high school early means you will have less time to develop the non-academic side of your experiences. If you really want to finish high school early, take a gap year and do things that will boost your application. Get a job, do some meaningful activity, volunteer, start some kind of long term project, maybe audit some classes at the local community college.
What the admissions officer said sounds exactly right to me. There are a number of issues with starting university early, academics being the one thing that is not likely to be a problem. I started university at a highly ranked and stressful university in the US a week after my 17th birthday, and IMHO this was a mistake (but NOT from an academic point of view, only from every other point of view).
Like you I also was a Canadian looking at top US schools, and after graduation I discovered another BIG problem: Canadian companies prefer to hire graduates from the many very strong Canadian schools. US companies prefer to hire graduates who have the legal right to work in the US. Unlike Canada, the US does not give work visas to international graduates from their universities.
As such, I would strongly recommend that any strong Canadian high school student look very closely at the top Canadian universities, such as McGill or Toronto or Queens or UBC (or …) if you want a large school, or Mount Allison or Acadia or Trent (or …) if you want a small school.