Is this an option if kid wants to leave school early?
Do you mean the student will graduate from high school early in a total of 3 years?
Unless the student is a prodigy universities require a high school diploma.
I think you got some great advice on the other thread you started on being young and “gifted”.
Have you considered AFS or other year-long study abroad programs instead?
The student could get a GED.
Will the student be able to satisfy all of the HS graduation requirements for his/her school?
Answering the question in the OP…sure…a kid can apply to an elite college when graduating from HS a year early. Why wouldn’t they be able to do so? Just check and make sure that the required courses for admission have been completed.
@WorryHurry411 didn’t you already have a whole thread about this?
Yes. Many selective universities do not require a high school diploma or GED. (In my state, you can’t get a GED until your age cohort has graduated high school, so that’s not necessarily an available option.)
In my personal experience, this is not perceived as a plus.
@allyphoe What was your personal experience, I mean which schools did you apply to?
Some states allow a three-year graduation option as long as certain credits and requirements (e.g. four English classes) are satisfied. And some universities (e.g. USC-Dornsife) have programs that allows high-performing juniors to start a year early.
Yes many schools don’t require a hs diploma. There are also schools that are created for early college students. Your child wouldn’t be alone!
The most elite of these schools is Bard Simon’s Rock. Many very clever people have attended BSR. I personally know a student who went there after just two years of high school. He enjoyed the experience greatly and his grandmother (who raised him) burst with pride every time I spoke with her. He received a lot of financial aid, FYI but I’m not sure how this works for other students there.
I think at BSR you can go all four years there or transfer to a larger school later.
There’s a list of early colleges –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_entrance_to_college
Is the student leaving early because they can leave early or has the student exhausted the most rigorous curriculum
that the school offers?
Are you considering having your son apply as a junior because academically he’s ready or because you feel that it may increase his acceptance to selective schools? Do you have a back up plan if he’s not accepted ?
All schools will consider juniors. A few like Carnegie-Mellon, USC, and Wellesley, have special programs for HS juniors who have basically exhausted their schools offerings. There are several more less elite schools that have programs also.
Yale wait-listed me for acceptance after my junior year of high school, and accepted me a year later. Everywhere else accepted me as a junior, where the highest ranking of “everywhere” was Oberlin. No new test scores, same teachers asked to write LORs. I spent my senior year abroad, having gotten a scholarship to do so; otherwise, I’d have gone to Oberlin.
That was 25 years ago, but I personally believe that neither being young nor leaving high school with less than 4 years are perceived as plusses by the most selective schools.
Elite schools accept kids who apply as juniors and that don’t graduate high school. I know some who applied as sophomores. I’ve worked with several kids who did this. A few schools aren’t as friendly to early applicants (Rice comes to mind).
https://admission.princeton.edu/applyingforadmission/admission-faqs/eligibility
Just a question. My kid is having fun in school. They have a good number of intelligent peers and a plethora of AP courses available to keep him engaged. I read this question in a local forum so felt curious.
My son did this, as the only course he would have taken inHS with English 4. It is not an advantage for admissions.fortunately, some colleges are aware of local circumstances.
The kids I know that did this were admitted to state uni, but not elite schools. I’ve heard and read about uber geniuses being admitted early. BUT, the really smart kid that was accelerated and finished a year or two early, don’t seem to benefit at top level schools. Bard or some other schools will take them.
When my D wanted to graduate HS early (after 3 years of HS), I called each college on her list anonymously to ask if they accept early graduates. Every school said yes, as long as the student had earned a HS diploma. Now, my kid, an excellent student, did not apply to the top elites in the country because she was seeking a specialized degree program in her field, and the top programs are not at Ivies, etc. She had a successful admissions outcome and landed at NYU (which is a very selective school itself) with a significant 4 year scholarship and was also selected to be part of a high level “Scholars” group as part of the acceptance as well. So, being an early graduate did not hold her back. In fact, she was more than an early graduate because she also had an early K entrance and so she entered NYU while still 16.
It is done quite often. But as others mentioned, this is not a plus at all. Elite universities are hard to get in for everyone, and even harder to get in at Junior year. It is still done. There was one who got in to Stanford after sophomore year (homeschooled) It’s more common to public schools like UC Berkeley.