Has anyone's child applied to colleges while a junior in high school and entered college as a senior in high school?
With grade and subject accelerations, DD is now a 14-year-old junior in high school. His GPA, college entrance exams, class rank are all at the very top. And he will have 10 AP classes plus 2 online college courses under his belt at the end of junior year. He could have gone to college even earlier but he wasn't emotionally ready and we put it off as long as we could. But now he has really run out of meaningful AP classes to take.
More online college courses is a possibility but it's really socially isolating, contents are not challenging enough for DD, and college tuition is nothing to sneeze at ($400-$1700 per course).
We discussed early graduation from high school, but we are told that if he graduates at the end of his junior year, he will not be eligible for valedictorian status or National Merit Scholarship (or most other scholarships for that matter). If he could get into a top university without having these formal recognitions, none of these would matter. But it would be a shame to forego these recognitions that DD has earned and possibly risk getting rejected by top universities that he could have gotten into if he went to high school for four years. To DD, it feels like a punishment for graduating early.
His high school is recommending going to college part time and high school part time, taking classes at a local college as a non-degree-seeking student while taking a couple more AP classes next year. But we are finding out that he will not be eligible for college financial aid unless he is enrolled full time. The tuition at the local college we are considering is about $4000 per course. Financially, it would make more sense to go to college full time as an admitted student. He would benefit from government financial aid as well as private merit-based scholarships.
So now, we are considering possibly applying to colleges this winter. If he gets in, he will defer high school graduation until next year, attending college full time but technically still a high school student. That way, he would be allowed to attend high school graduation with his peers at the end of his senior year (and be eligible for recognitions and scholarships). Is that a possibility?
There are so many options, all unorthodox, and we are confused! We would like some advice and guidance but we don't know anyone else in a situation like this. We are in communication with his high school counselor and admissions officers at universities we are considering but nobody has seen a case like this and can't give us clear answers. Has anyone here ever faced a situation like this? Any advice for us? Is there perhaps a better option we haven't considered?
