There are also some paths not mentioned here. Using myself as an example: I didn’t go to high school at all and went straight to university, without getting a GED. This was enabled by the Early Entrance Program that I went to, but in California there is also the straightforward path of enrolling in a community college which is part of the Transfer Admission Guarantee program. This gets you guaranteed admission to one of 6 UCs (all except Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD) after the completion of a certain number of eligible units while maintaining a minimum GPA (details might vary slightly by UC, but I think a 3.5 average is the highest required at any of them). Happily, many of the participating community colleges don’t have age or high school equivalency requirements.
It did take me 6 years to graduate, mostly for reasons contingent to my particular circumstances (many people attending the same program graduated successfully in 4 years). I do think it was better than the default alternative of first going to high school and then university “the normal way”. Very few of the people I know who accelerated or omitted significant chunks of their later education, for similar reasons to mine (expecting it to be low or negative value), consider it a mistake.
There are also some paths not mentioned here. Using myself as an example: I didn’t go to high school at all and went straight to university, without getting a GED. This was enabled by the Early Entrance Program that I went to, but in California there is also the straightforward path of enrolling in a community college which is part of the Transfer Admission Guarantee program. This gets you guaranteed admission to one of 6 UCs (all except Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD) after the completion of a certain number of eligible units while maintaining a minimum GPA (details might vary slightly by UC, but I think a 3.5 average is the highest required at any of them). Happily, many of the participating community colleges don’t have age or high school equivalency requirements.
It did take me 6 years to graduate, mostly for reasons contingent to my particular circumstances (many people attending the same program graduated successfully in 4 years). I do think it was better than the default alternative of first going to high school and then university “the normal way”. Very few of the people I know who accelerated or omitted significant chunks of their later education, for similar reasons to mine (expecting it to be low or negative value), consider it a mistake.