I am a CPA as is my H and S. Yes, the plan could work but maybe isn’t ideal.
Some issues I see may be: 1) son’s personal development may be hindered if he is home-schooled and has no social outlets; 2) he is likely to encounter the same problem about not feeling challenged academically/not having a peer group that is a good fit if the plan is to spend significant time at a CC; 3) if he decides to look at a competitive college rather than a CC for the first two years the impact of home-schooling should be assessed; and 4) as the OP knows, accounting is sequential in nature so if he starts at a CC and transfers the students at the college he transfers to may have a bit of a different starting point in terms of the depth of learning from earlier classes.
Note that CPA candidates now need 150 college credits so many go for an additional year to get a MS in accounting. But I know some students who get enough AP credits/summer classes to get to the 150 credits in four years. I don’t see graduating HS a year younger as an issue.
We are also a family of CPAs and think it is an excellent career – I hope your son finds a path that works for him.
I would not recommend taking an online Intro to Accounting class for credit…if the OPs son is interested in becoming a CPA, it is best to take this foundational class in person (preferably at the college he will attend).
All students in a business school will take a business core curriculum (consisting of intro classes in a variety of disiplines such as accounting, finance, marketing, etc.) before finalizing their major.
Is there another in-person option for high school? The towns near me have various reciprocity arrangements with other school systems. Some of them charge non-residents (cheaper than private school but not free) and others do swaps so that a teacher who is a resident of one town might be able to get his/her kids into the school system where he/she works (keeps things easier for transportation, vacation days, etc.) I’d start there. If the only impetus for graduating early is “Get me out of here” maybe a different HS is the answer.
Agree with publisher- looking at other aspects of accounting might be more engaging (i.e. “less dry”) and more motivating. I have a friend who is a retired forensic accountant and he had a fantastic (not at all dry) career doing things most people don’t think of as accounting related (tracing artwork, identifying high end stolen watches, becoming an expert on private jets and the protocols for flying/landing in different locations around the world, etc.)
This! Do not let him graduate homeschool. The rest of the plan is fine. You can enroll him in homeschool (regulations vary by state) but do not graduate him until he is done with community college and ready to apply to a 4 year school. He could potentially miss out on a lot of scholarship money if he transfers into a 4 year school vs going in as a first year with an Associates degree. Also in my state (NC) if he takes community college classes while in high school (homeschool or public or private) it’s free, but after high school graduation it costs $$.
Does your state have a Middle College program? Look into it. Know several kids who have done it who were bored being in high school and it worked out great for them. They got their Associates and graduated high school at the same time and then transferred to a 4 year school (including UNC-Chapel Hill).
Many (most?) colleges are homeschool-friendly, but I’m not sure what they’d think of seeing somebody complete 2 years of ‘homeschool’ in one month. It would likely be fine for enrolling in a community college, and perhaps if your student then applies to a 4-year school as a transfer student nobody will look at a high school transcript, but I’d be hesitant to choose that path in case your student changes plans and the high school transcript becomes relevant. Plenty of homeschoolers graduate early, and nobody would think twice if your student graduated after a year of real homeschool, one year early, such that they had the typical required classes (4 English credits, a standard World/US/Gov and Econ sequence for social studies, etc). Locally, it’s not unusual for public school students on block schedules to graduate a semester early because they’ve completed the required classes, and many could graduate a year early if they doubled up on English.
That being said, many homeschoolers choose to do mostly dual enrollment classes their last 2 years of high school. It eliminates the issue of being a transfer student rather than a first-year applicant while still allowing your student to take college classes. My own kid just started college after being homeschooled all the way through school. Kid didn’t choose to pursue AP/DE aggressively because many classes were cool, interest-led courses. But, kid still had enough to start college as a sophomore in an engineering program and is on track to graduate in 3 years unless kid decides to double major or change majors.
The vast majority of the homeschooled kids that I know didn’t choose to graduate early because of the DE/transfer issue. But, many also had extracurriculars that would come to an end after graduating. Does your student have anything like that? Sports, academic competition, band/choir? Is your student a candidate for a National Merit Scholarship? That’s open to homeschoolers but I’m not sure how it would work if the student was already graduated. Your plan could work, but there are some issues to consider.
Also, there are online high school programs that are highly challenging and not just geared toward churning out a diploma as quickly as possible. Also see if there might be charter high schools in your area with a more flexible model.
Having re-read the question, if the problem is just boredom that can easily be solved by doing ‘real homeschool’. Homeschoolers pick and choose providers or design courses of study based on their kid’s interests. Perhaps DE for math if he’s already past Calc 2 (Calculus BC in the AP world). If he wants challenge and isn’t past that point, Art of Problem Solving, whether online or working independently through the book, offers more than enough challenge for most students. There are interesting extras like Number Theory or Counting and Probability that can add depth and breadth. There are an abundance of courses in various programming languages for interest, or, to be practical for an accountant if he wants to write programs to extract data from reports (this isn’t said correctly and is totally outside of my field, but people in business talk about stuff along these lines). Maybe he takes a business class so that when he does accounting he knows where business clients are coming from. If his writing is good, maybe he takes English classes that are more interesting. My kid studied classic Science Fiction for a semester at home and took a British Lit class DE. He can take interesting arts classes, whether online, DE, or DIY. Sculpture, music appreciation, drawing, ballroom dance…there are lots of possibilities. He can try psychology, sociology, or philosophy classes at the CC. There might be homeschool groups in your area. In other words, if you are going to pull him from school, he can use the time in a non-boring way, whether by doing DE or by taking interesting homeschool classes, instead of just checking boxes if his goal is to learn interesting things.
I, too, was very bored in high school. It was many moons ago.
Homeschooling wasn’t an option for me. My parents were no dummies, but my knowledge of STEM far exceeded theirs. Who was going to lead me in homeschooling???
What I did was find a local 4 year college that actually offered classes that catered to high school students. They were on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. I took advance math and a bunch of science related “fun” classes that taught me a lot. It helped some with the boredom in high school. But those college classes motivated me to get the best grades possible as I now understood that college was a very different environment than high school and I wanted to get into the best college I could.
I also went to the guidance office in my high school and volunteered to be a tutor in math. It turned out that there were always some parents calling the school and asking for math help for their kids. Not all the tutoring experiences were positive, but those that weren’t I ended them (kids just not wanting to learn at all). But those kids that wanted to learn, did so. It was very rewarding for me, and I still have fond memories (and some good stories) about my tutoring experiences. Tutoring also means that you really have to understand the material and, I believe, that helped me later on.
I didn’t do it, but your son might contact one of the colleges he is interested in and ask their admission’s office, what they would do in his position?
One of mine almost left early but got into theater and then heavily into music and the extra time in high school gave time to develop that to the point where they were admitted to their best fit school.
Another one of mine didn’t do much school junior year due to dancing professionally and didn’t do senior year at all. They got a GED and then wanted a diploma which we got through North Atlantic Regional which was by mail. Colleges seemed to find her interesting as an “outlier.”
What is the source of the boredom? Even if academics aren’t satisfying (our school was mediocre), there aer extracurriculars and friends, different ways to grow and develop. Is it possible he is depressed, has ADHD, social isolation, doesn’t like a teacher- sorry to be off the wall here but I did learn with my kids that boredom sometimes was a sign of something else. Is it just the classes?
I met one high school age student who impressed me a lot. He was sick of high school and was going to community college. He also got his aviation license. I am sure colleges would love him too.
The financial consequences of transferring are something to consider. Also, will community college also be boring? If it is only about academic boredom, it would seem that dual enrollment would be best.
My kids loved the classes on that online school, our high school accepted them and eventually joined so that 25 kids could take classes for any semester. Some habitually bored kids told me that these classes were the first time they felt interested.
One more question: is he so career focused that he wants to get right to his CPA? What is the rush? Just asking, and expect there may be a good answer.
Does your local CC require a HS diploma? Most don’t.
I would look into him doing his Junior and Senior year as a dual enrollment student, taking his classes at the CC and graduating with an AA and a HS diploma at the same time.
I never indicated whether or not the student should take the accounting course for credit–just suggested that he take one to gauge interest; but, I am curious as to why you would not recommend that one take an online intro to accounting course ?
Regardless, there are outstanding online programs available for those who do want to take an online accounting course. In the recent past, we liked the offerings from a couple of University of California continuing education divisions. Were outstanding.
There are also a number of certificate programs available online which are great, but no college credit is offered or available.
I would not recommend taking an online accounting class for college credit for a potential accounting major – I feel the student would be better off taking the class in person at the full time college he will attend. While the basic knowledge will be the same in every intro to accounting course, I feel it would be best to take the exact same course as one’s peers to be on an equal footing in future classes. I said absolutely nothing negative about the idea of taking a not for credit accounting course.
That is my opinion and if you differ that is fine – since personal back-and-forths are not permitted on CC and the OP has not noted any particular interest in taking an accounting class at this point, let’s please agree to have the OP take it from here.
My child took an Intro to Accounting course at a community college. They did retake at his university but at least they had a basic knowledge of the material although it was MUCH more difficult at the business school, a weed out course. Ended up hating accounting but admits that they may not have passed if they hadn’t had that intro course. Was thrilled when barely got through accounting two and never had to deal with it again.
And, the CC intro course did not count as an accounting credit but did receive credits in general studies so it was not a wasted class at all, although if they had it to do over again they would have taken it from a local university rather than community college as it then may have transferred as accounting.
Homeschooling doesn’t inherently mean having all classes be parent-taught at home. At one time, DE or DIY at home were the only options but now there are fantastic homeschool courses that kids can use. Most kids that I know use a combination of DIY and outsourced classes. Many homeschooled kids also become adept at self-teaching and using various resources to find answers to questions and some kids have a subject or 2 that is just ‘investigate interesting topics and read books about things that you don’t know’. I wouldn’t craft an entire education this way, necessarily, but there’s a place for it. Again, this is easier now that it was even 10 years ago.
Generally, parents do need to be involved in finding resources, though, and I’d be the first to say that it isn’t a good fit for everybody. But, it’s also not unusual for students to go deeper into a subject than their parents. I’m on a homeschool board with a parent who had one child complete many college physics classes while still in high school, while another became fluent in multiple languages. The parent no longer taught the students in those subjects, but worked with a local college that would accept a 16 year old in upper-level physics and found native speakers in several languages.
I’ll reply with my own history, since I considered graduating from high school a year early for many of the same reasons. I ultimately decided to stay in high school until the end. The benefit of doing so, is that I was then able to graduate from college earlier, and spared no small amount of expense doing so. (I was planning to graduate from college in 3 years, but when I was registering for the last fall semester, I realized that I was going to be 3 hours short of my always intended major, but that I could complete the degree in my came out of nowhere interest, so I changed my major and finished college in 5 semesters.) Having that quality, though brief, time at college, I got a significant scholarship to law school, and was able to complete that in 2.5 years as well, so I was 20 when I started law school and 23 when I started practicing law at BigLaw. I was always the youngest in my cohort, but I do feel like starting college at 18 was the right call. It didn’t matter as much later, other than that I couldn’t go to bars with my law school classmates, which frankly was probably a benefit.
While I never considered a homeschool or GED option, I absolutely feel like trading a year of public high school for a year of college at much greater expense was the right call.
The biggest question is are you prepared to be school principal, teacher (even if only in a mentoring capacity), and guidance counselor as well as parent? If so, research your state’s homeschool requirements. If not, research other options: concurrent/dual enrollment, more AP coursework, participation in a work-release or independent study program, a different high school …
Homeschooling is not a deterrent to college. But it sounds as if what your child really wants is to quit school. One month to finish all high school requirements? It could take longer than that just to get started. If you truly feel it is in your child’s best interests to be finished with high school now, look into your state’s GED requirements. But, really, avenues exist for high school students to take college courses while still officially high school students. Other posters have pointed out the benefits of following this path.
I can’t comment on accounting. When I left the professoriat for finance many moons ago, I picked up several books and got the gist, so I have no idea how it is best to learn it.
There may be intermediate options between homeschool and 100% traditional school.
My son is very bright and severely dyslexic. The Deputy Superintendent of Schools suggested that he do partial homeschooling. He did math outside the school (he had said of his honors math class to me “Dad, we discuss an idea on Monday. I got it on Monday. We are still doing it on Friday.”) and did junior honors math in under 3 months 3 hours a week (we hired tutors from our local Ivy to do math with him). He was very interested in strategy and did some game theory but also created a course to develop games of strategy. We also used outside help with writing to substantially improve his writing and enrolled him in a university writing course. But, he took lab science, social studies and art (and PE I think) at the HS. So, he continued to have social interaction and make friends. One of his college essays about was about how he counseled one of his classmates about coming out to his parents. Despite being a complete nerd (he played chess at lunch), my son asked one of the hot girls to the prom and remarkably she said yes. So, he did not miss out on at least some of the social development.
It was not without complications. In his senior year, the HS wanted to give him a diploma. The English department was sort of mad that he had skipped all of their courses after freshman year except for a more remedial class in writing and did not want to give him credit for the homeschool classes. We had a meeting including the Principal and the Deputy Superintendent of Schools and the head of the English department. In the meeting, my son explained why we had done the partial homeschooling (and in particular why the way the English Department taught did not work for him given his LDs) and what he had gotten from his homeschooling. After the English dept chairman left, the Deputy Superintendent said, “Don’t worry. We will take care of this. You will get a diploma from the HS.” She had followed him from the start, dropping in on some of his Moot Court competitions and the award ceremony for art prizes and actually volunteered to write a college rec (he did not apply until his gap year).
So, maybe there is a middle path that could work.
Incidentally, I skipped two grades as a kid. I’m not big on graduating early – the social development is very important, even if the school is boring. That is where partial homeschooling could be very helpful. Take classes that are interesting and use the school for things like lab science to maintain social interaction.