Graduating early helpful for an engineer?

<p>^^ My class rank would suffer because even if I do graduate early, I would still do one year of dual enrollement while others would be taking AP classes, my weighted GPA (out of 4.5) would be around 4.1-4.2 probably.</p>

<p>What I am thinking of doing now is that my junior year of high school I will apply to some prestigious colleges (that have programs for people that make less than a certain amt of $, that we would apply to) and if I got accepted I would graduate early and go. Otherwise, I would continue one more year of dual enrollement and when I graduate, I would continue at that college. How does that sound?</p>