I’m a freshman at a public high school. I am aiming to go to an Ivy League. I am currently thinking about graduating one year early. I will be able to obtain the required number of credits to do so by my junior year. I am planning to take the most rigorous courses offered at my high school, and also, I am planning to do at least two APs through independent study each year (I am currently studying AP psychology and AP calculus ab). I am currently volunteering at a middle school by tutoring people in math.
I do not mind that I will not be graduating with my peers as I am already socially awkward, and I will inevitably lose contact with some of my friends and meet new people.
Should I graduate early?
If I do graduate early, how much more or less of a chance will I get for being accepted in the choice of my school?
Ivies want a lot of extracurricular involvement and it is more difficult to achieve the kind of depth they want in 3 years.
Just a side note, is there a particular reason why you are socially awkward? I hate to break it to you, but you will have interviews for Ivy League schools, and being socially awkward will be a pretty big turn off for them. It will be difficult to overcome, but seek help from your parents, school guidance counselor and even teachers if you can.
Bottom line: I think staying in high school for 4 years is better.
I believe that one reason I am socially awkward is because society judges and m treats me differently from most. I am also at fault for being awkward. Well, actually I am better at talking to adults than people my age. I am also an avid chess player and I am marl ping in a psychiatrist write a research paper. Is this enough? What else could I do? I can’t do sports or instruments.
For Ivy League, it is never “enough”. The admissions process is a big gamble. You could do all that and still not get admitted because of the extremely competitive applicant pool.
An extra year of high school just means an extra year to learn and mature before moving onto the next chapter of your life. Ivy Leagues do not really care too much how old you are, but like I said earlier, you can do more in 4 years than you can in 3, you mature more in 4 years than in 3 (which will show in your essays), and that means a higher chance of getting in, generally.
Do you have the option of taking dual-enrollment classes on a college campus in your junior and/or senior years of high school? If you just don’t like the high school experience, this can be a good alternative to graduating early (which would probably hurt you in college admissions because you wouldn’t have as much time to take advanced classes and develop your extracurriculars).
You would probably be better off staying and getting the most out of what is available to you before moving on. That is particularly true if you are aiming for a very competitive college. Unless you have done some pretty amazing things like won national awards or won an Oscar, losing a year’s worth of achievements and a year;s worth of courses isn’t going to do you any favors. And if you are socially awkward, you might have time to change that prior to college. That won’t serve you well in college or beyond.
Also, although Calc AB is ok, Calc BC is obviously better and psych AP is a joke. Take some college classes locally or conduct some research at a local university.
This is a common topic – lots of discussion about this. Many top students fulfill their state minimums early and COULD graduate early but 99% don’t for some of the reasons above.
“I will be able to obtain the required number of credits to do so by my junior year.” This is nothing new.
But let me point out something – you mentioned social awkwardness so you don’t mind leaving early. Your solution is to go to an incredibly selective college? not a good plan. The very selective colleges really seek those who are fully immersed in the communities around them and are men and women of influence. Are there colleges who’ll take a top scholar with good scores early? Yes. But to be noticed by the selective schools, your situation simply makes already dismal chances all the worse.
If you’re miserable and school won’t pose an appropriate challenge for you senior year (and there’s no dual-enrollment program), graduating early might be a good idea. Schools will need you to show that you’ve exhausted every opportunity available to you, though, and often pay more attention to the social skills of early grads – you’ll need to come across as a mature person in your interview and write thoughtful essays.
Join some clubs and start investigating things that interest you now. Get involved with several activities that make you happy, and try to find people who “get” you, who have the same sort of humor as you, whether in school or out, to be friends with. Self-studying APs is much less important than having new experiences and thoughts.
If I were you, I’d put the idea of early graduation on the back burner for a year or two. A lot can change in that time, especially if you find friendship in teachers and peers and enjoyment in some ECs. My sophomore year, I tossed around the idea of graduating early or transferring to a boarding school, but decided not too when I realized that I could make my senior schedule quite interesting.
(Of course, October this year, I realized that some of the classes I thought would be interesting and challenging weren’t going to stop being bland and decided to apply early, making for a rush to get apps done and start on an extra English and History course…maybe don’t plan for such a short term turn-around, but it’s definitely possible to do .)
If you are in fact “socially awkward” an extra year of maturation in HS might be a good thing. I’d consider staying for your senior year or graduating early and doing a gap year program. I imagine you could do college level work but being both “awkward” and younger than everyone else sounds like a bad combination to start college with.
Just keep in mind that there is nothing that will guarantee you to get into Ivy schools – whenever you apply have a wide range of safety, match, and reach schools you could be happy attending.
What about graduating early but doing a Gap year in something interesting to you. Research might be good. If you are not happy in high school spending an extra year will not necessarily be beneficial. You can choose whether to apply in high school or during your Gap year (during high school is easier).
You need to be honest about your academics, are you a genius or just an above average smart kid? If you are the type that can score perfectly on SATs or ACTs and get straight As in AP classes as a sophomore, and get involved in ECs that interest you, such as research or leadership, then I think you should be ok. If you are the typical ivy aspirant, probably will put you at a disadvantage.
I do agree with the others that it is harder to fulfill the unstated ivy requirements in 3 years. I would wait and see, you may make some friends that will make high school fun, it is still early.
Graduating early will play against you at most highly selective schools.
You have two possibilities: dual enrol at whatever college (4-year or community college) is nearby, it could be junior and senior year; or, spend a year abroad in a country where you speak the language (ASSE, Nacel, or YFU organize this. You attend school in another country and live with a family. It’s totally different from American high schools.)
I’ve known quite a few people with Aspergers who started, sometimes early, at local colleges. I don’t know if this is at all relevant except the socially awkward part. Sometime parents encourage such students to apply to highly competitive colleges with the rationale that the student has strong grades and should therefore be able to get in. Many of these students were totally uninvolved in their high school socially. They therefore had more time than peers to devote to school. They therefore had high grades. It is my impression that these students would have been better served by learning to interact more effectively socially than supporting them moving to college early. In fact, they could have used another year or so to mature and to learn how to mimic typical social skills.
The reason social skills training is as important as academic competence is that after 4 years in college, most students enter the work force. Students socially unprepared to interact with peers are usually unprepared for the workplace 4 years later. That is because, in the real world, there is no “accommodation” for social awkwardness. People prefer hiring and interacting with others who are socially able and who seem to like to interact with them.
Being an exchange student in high school doesn’t prevent you from being one in college (in fact you could go to another country yet and become trilingual) and it’s not at all the same in high school and in college. In high school, it’s structured and designed to get a feel for what family life, school, etc, are like in that country; you will be around almost no American. In college, there’s no structure, you decide everything, you can be as immersed into the culture as you wish (100 % or very little), etc.
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