<p>I read some of your other posts and see that your school system is crummy, and that you want to go here to “something like Caltech or Stanford”.<br>
If your school system is crummy, then do you think another school would be much better than your current one? </p>
<p>I don’t know the laws of homeschooling in Columbia, or about you. If you started homeschooling, would you have the maturity to do it without even the grades you’re getting from your current school? How do you see homeschooling as different from your current school? There are many MANY ways to do homeschooling (at least with US laws), and one of those ways that a lot of people use is pretty much as you describe your current school above. You have to be self-directed enough to keep doing the work and figure out for yourself what corrections are needed. </p>
<p>There are certainly more interesting ways to homeschool, but that is the easiest one to put together. Do you have the money for outside classes or the ability to get to other opportunities? Are your parents willing and able to devote a lot of time to your homeschooling?</p>
<p>If you end up trading your current method for homeschooling, you’ll still be teaching yourself everything but you won’t have the grades to prove it, so you’ll absolutely need to take the SAT 2, CLEP, or AP tests to show what you know. You need to have letters of recommendation from outside your family - if you’re not in school where will you get them? Do you know your current teachers well enough that they could write letters for you?</p>
<p>Another note - there are hundreds of excellent schools in the US. You don’t have to limit yourself to just the top 20 schools that you’ve heard of.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>