<p>I should be a Junior this year, but in October 2011 I voluntarily dropped out of high school because of an illness as well as an incompatibility with the school. I held fairly good grades; 3.2-3.4 GPA with honors and AP classes. I was a president of a few clubs as well as created one of my own. And I participated in other after school activities such as the school play and volunteer work. As for SAT testings, I took one SAT II (bio 700) a few years back and I recently took the SAT I test last Dec (around 1900). SAT score is low (I didn't study for it), so I will retake this upcoming March.</p>
<p>Now I'm considering my options for school. Should I take the GED and get into a community college, and then apply for colleges? Should I try applying for colleges next year with a better SAT score and self-study for AP tests? Are there better options than these?</p>
<p>I'm looking to get into top tier colleges. I'm hesitant to start thinking about them before I try out community college or retake the SATs because as of now, I have very slim chances of getting it. I'm considering either going to a community college next year and take courses there, or self-teach courses and take AP tests to show my worth. I need some sort of success story about how not going to high school was such a great turn for me before I apply anywhere serious. So, I need to know my options before taking action. What should I do?</p>
<p>You definitley need to get your GED ASAP, then go to community college, and then you can apply to a 4-year college. However, I advise you not to apply to a top tier college, because your chances are extremely unlikely. The more you procrastinate in getting your GED, the less chances you will have into getting into a 4-year college</p>
<p>I didn’t “drop out” in the traditional manner. I was not forced out of school. I took time off due to an illness and decided to take the year off. If I wanted to, I could return to the high school next year and pick things up from where I left off.</p>
<p><em>However</em>, I also left the high school because I didn’t feel that it was sufficiently satisfying my educational needs. I wanted more out of schooling and was getting impatient with the pace of my high school courses (which were the highest available). This is why I’m not looking into returning to high school and looking towards going straight to college.</p>
<p>Why don’t you look for a homeschooling route? There are many great online schools you can look into that may offer a more challenging experience for you, and you can get your high school diploma that way. But I have to wonder, and please don’t interpret this the wrong way, but are you sure the classes were really too easy for you if you had a 3.2-3.4 GPA?</p>
<p>Agree with the above post. If the classes were too easy, then your GPA would be much higher. Are you sure that you are not just a bit lazy and don’t like doing school work? </p>
<p>If you continued your path, you could have gotten into Syracuse, Penn State, etc… So it is a shame that you decided to take a year off and did nothing productive within that time.</p>
<p>To have your best shot, you should go back to high school and enroll in dual-enrollment classes, which means you take classes at a local college but you are technically still in high school, they count like AP classes. </p>
<p>Then, you can either go to community college or try to apply to universities. You don’t have a **** at any top tier schools, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a great education somewhere else. Ranking doesn’t mean much.</p>