By graduating early, Would I be eligible for various scholarships (specifically Merit)? My counselor told me that I would be skipping my junior year.
Don’t. Stay for the regular four years and take hard classes. Dual enroll in a local community college if you’ve run out of courses.
Graduating early will more than likely significantly harm your chances at merit; you’re giving up an extra year to retest, build your resume, raise your GPA, participate in more activities, etc. Graduating early is rarely a good idea, even for top students.
I say do whatever you believe is best. I can tell you that as an early graduate I have not recieved any backlash in terms of merit based financial aid (mind you I have a very unique early grad situation) All I can say is to truly weigh your choices carefully if you are trying to get into an “elite” school maybe you should stay to really build up your resume.
I agree with thefreakshow
I am graduating early currently and although I’ve only heard back from two schools, both of them gave me significant merit aid (I’m in the running for a full scholarship at TCU and a half scholarship at USC–Southern California). Many people would advise you to stay, which is indeed a good idea if your senior year could give you an extra boost. But if you have extenuating circumstances and you think every other part of your application can compete with the average senior applicant to your schools, go for it.
If OP wants scholarships, OP needs to be significantly better than the average applicant to the schools he/she is looking at.
This is usually very hard to do if you graduate early. Especially at top schools like USC.