What steps do you have to take in high school in order to graduate from college in 3 years?

@wis75 - my kids did go on further educationally. In my post I noted that my oldest has two masters degrees and my other child has an MBA and her CPA license. Since most don’t have two masters degrees and many accounting majors do not end up with a CPA license, I think they did go further than many of their peers. But no, education is not a race. It’s a trek and that trek can be long or short or any distance in between.

My other two children also brought in a large number of college credits but they did not choose to accelerate. One opted to go to school part time and also work in her field. This enabled her to get a plum job before she even graduated. My youngest is at a Service Academy and they do not allow any acceleration.

What I sought to give my children was choices. It was the choice of two of them to accelerate. We did not require them to do this. That said, it worked very well for them and they have no regrets.

@3scoutsmom - you make an excellent point about knowing the policy of the college you want to attend. In my state, there is a website where you can put in a county college class and then see if a uni from our state will accept that class and if so, what kind of credit you can get for it (ex, elective credit only or will they accept it to meet core credit requirements).
We did this with every county college class my kids took, so that no credits were ‘wasted’.

We also looked at the CLEP policy at different schools as they varied widely.