Skip Senior and apply to college in Grade 11

Are you allow to skip senior year and apply college (UC or elsewhere) in Grade 11

– will meet all the UC-A-G Requirements by end of Grade 11.

Course completed:

Honor Physics (Grade 9)
English (Grade 9)
Spanish 2 (Grade 9)
Pre-Calc Honor (Grade 9)
Honor Chem (Grade 9)
Jazz Ensemble (Grade 9)
2 Sports (Grade 9)
Intro to Computer Science (Grade 9)
History (Grade 9)
Theology (Grade 9)

AP Calculus BC (Grade 10)
AP Biology (Grade 10)
Spanish 3 (Grade 10)
English (Grade 10)
Theology (Grade 10)
Digital Photograph (Grade 10)
World History Honor (Grade 10)
Biology Honor (Grade 10)
2 Sports (Grade 10)

To be Taken:
AP Computer Science (Grade 11)
AP Statistic (Grade 11)
AP English Language and Composition (Grade 11)
AP Chem (Grade 11)
AP US History

  • not sure if need to take another English class
    theology (Grade 11)

You need 4 years English so I what do you plan to do about that 4th year? What about an American Government class (not a requirement at your HS)?

AP Spanish and AP Physics available at your HS? Possible classes which could help for the UC’s and other competitive schools.

What about EC’s? Showing consistency over 4 years is much better than 3 years.

Have you exhausted all available HS courses? How about doing dual enrollment at your local CC to get a head start on the UC GE’s instead of graduating early?

There is really no benefit to graduate early even if you have the a-g course requirements completed since the majority of applicants go above and beyond the minimums to be competitive.

Why do you want to do that? What is your plan after high school?

Interest in STEM. Not sure if I want to stay in HS for just AP Physics - not interest in filling up my schedule with non-stem AP , For English, AP English with result of 3,4,5. will fulfill the UC A-G Requirement or take another English class in Grade 11. For EC, I won major national piano competition and does track and field. American Gov’t class is Grade 9 History. Unweighted GPA is 4.0. Are you allow to apply college at Grade 11 and re-apply again in Grade 12 if I didn’t like the result.

This. You will have a much better outcomes if you spend 4 years in HS. Taking non stem APs is important. Schools don’t want or expect students to start specializing in HS. The other students who will be applying will have 4 years of math, 4 years of science, 4 years of english, 3-4 years of history and foreign language.

Do you have volunteer hours? Leadership experiences?

I agree with what the others have been posting. I would stay in high school and spend your time thinking about how you can differentiate yourself from the other applicants when you apply senior year. What else to you do besides school? Work? Volunteer? Sports? You can also talk to your school counselor about dual enrolling at a local college during senior year if you are feeling you want some more challenge beyond what your school offers.

There is absolutely no benefit in skipping Senior year unless you are bored and you have already fulfilled all of the educational requirements for both you HS diploma and the colleges you would like to attend.

You can apply whenever you want, but if you haven’t fulfilled the course requirements, you application will be put on the “reject” pile, especially in the unfulfilled course requirements are in core subjects like English. You’re also missing 3 or 4 years of foreign language that many colleges like.

So you’re “allowed” skip Senior, so long as you’ve fulfilled the graduation requirements of your state and High School. However, doing so with you curriculum would effectively keep you from being accepted in almost every selective school, and many less selective schools.

Selective colleges like to see that their students are well prepared for college. Fulfilling the minimal requirements will not impress them, even if you fulfilled them in three years.

I don’t know about UC, but one of the student panelists at a competition I attended this weekend started at MIT after her junior year in HS. I know CMU also allows it. I suspect the option is there for many schools but the actual number of students is probably very low.

Kind of bored at current school. There is not much interesting subject to take in Grade 12 and also save lot of money from private tuition. I will fulfill high school diploma but taking an 2 English course in Grade 11. I will already have 7 AP at the end of Grade 11. I will wait for SAT score, AP score etc… to see what to do… Which school allow junior to apply college?

As long as you have completed all HS requirements for graduation and meet the target college requirements, then you can apply to any college of your choice. If you are targeting the UC’s, the more a-g courses you have completed, the better your EC’s are which includes showing leadership and long term commitment, the better off you will be when you apply.

Again, if you are bored with HS, check into Dual enrollment options at your local community college and finish out Senior year in HS with some additional college credit.

just to answer the OP’s original question, the answer is yes, you can apply as long as you’ve completed all the a-g requirements and the HS requirements. Whether it is a good idea is a totally different question. My neighbor’s kid did that, she went 3 years for HS (public HS), then went to UCLA. My kid (who went to school with her since 1st grade) could have done that as well, but chose a slightly different path, which was to take a bunch of CC classes along with a bunch of AP classes, but stayed the 4 years in HS. He’ll graduate in 3 years in college, so from a math standpoint it sort of works out the same way (though there are also issues with being in college 3 years instead of 4 which aren’t germane to this discussion).

I think a better approach would be to research colleges that match what you are looking for and then check whether they require a high school diploma. It’s included in the Common Data Set - Item C3. (And apparently either CMU has changed or I remembered incorrectly).

Edit: Well, so much for that strategy. CMUs CDS says it is required and then their admissions page has

”Early Admission is for highly qualified juniors in high school who apply to Carnegie Mellon a year early. It’s ideal for mature, responsible juniors who’ve exhausted the courses offered at their high schools and taken all required standardized testing.“

Whoa there @samiest.

Are you a mother of a students or a student? Are you 10th grade or 11th grade? Your different threads and different posts provide different, and often contradicting, information, so would you please clarify who you actually are?

Imagine you are a college admissions officer:

Would you rather admit:

  1. Someone who has taken 4 years of HS classes and who values taking classes
  2. Someone who has only taken 3 years of HS classes and is trying to get out of taking classes

Your solution is to “skip senior year”…but what is the problem you are trying to solve?
Why not do 4 years of HS as expected?
And if you want to get out of the HS environment, why not do a dual enrollment program in the local community college?

@CMU there is a separate application process for students who want to apply after 11th grade. I’d say there are 25 per year who get admitted that way.

I’d rather admit the students that are most prepared to succeed and contribute the the University. Some exceptional students will be there after Junior year.

Do you think Mark Cuban would be much better off today with another year of HS classes, rather then being a Freshman at Pitt at 17? Should Pitt have rejected him.

Yes, it’s a small fraction of a percent, but I suspect those 25 kids at CMU do quite well.

Hi,
Most of the responses here would be advising you to stay in high school four years. However it truly depends on what is your end game - in the sense that of education end point. Let me explain below.

My son is graduating in three years because of it fits into his plan. Even in 3 years he is taking total of more than 32 credits/courses vs 24 credit/courses required for high school diploma (he took many classes in middle school and some in college as duel enrollment). He can stay for fourth year but all the extra six or seven classes are just extra. In our case, college tuition is not relevant as he would be getting full free tuition at any state universities due to his grades/SAT (bright futures). So taking more AP classes to save tuition is not a point at all.

If you graduate in three years and aiming for top 20 then it is not advised as you have one less year for extracurricular activities which are importannt to differentiate for top colleges. However for my son, though he has qualifying score and close to perfect GPA, his goal is medicine or at least master’s degree and so he is not aiming at top 20 but rather than a decent university where he can get good undergraduate GPA and also good scholarship (for room and board).

So for him undergraduate university becomes less important and outside top 20-25, most other universities that we approached are readily willing to consider him even with three years of high school. For him, he plans to do all four years in university as that will help him in doing all the extra activities (volunteering, research, internship), MCAT prep etc which are needed for medicine, rather than squeezing them in 3 years of college. All activities (volunteering, other ECs) done in high school years are not considered/used for medicine applications and so it makes more sense to do those in college rather than in high school.

In short, if you are going for professional degree (medicine, law, dental, pharmacy, pa etc) or at least plan to do master’s and not aiming for top 20 then graduate in 3 years can be seriously considered. For fourth year of english, take a class in summer or online class or even two english class in one year.

Finally a year saved in high school can be used to take gap year before starting master’s or professional degree (particularly in medicine - taking gap year is becoming more common) to make yourself competitive application wise. PM me if you want more info.