Ask HN: Should I drop out of high school? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I drop out of high school?

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Hi, I'm a sophomore in a fairly good high school with a 5.1 GPA. I recently realized that most of the classes I'm taking (all honors) are kinda pathetic. Because the classes I take are easy and not relevant, I don't put forth any effort. My school specializes in athletics, and I want to start a business or go to college now, and start learning more. What I've seen is that in high school academia, is that it's really ~70% of the time spent pleasing other people or rapid memorization that I won't use in my life after high school. I'm really passionate about what I want to do, and I'm ready to go through with my decision. So is it worth it to take classes at my community college and get a GED to go to another college, or should I change my mentality and try in my classes and graduate early?

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No.

If you can, find a program like Washington State's Running Start: http://www.k12.wa.us/RunningStart/default.aspx .

Read pg's _What You'll Wish You'd Known_: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html and pay attention to the part about treating high school like your day job.

I'm really passionate about what I want to do, and I'm ready to go through with my decision.

You're passionate about what you do now -- but you may not be in six months, two years, or six years. If you don't even have a HS diploma, you'll be unfairly hamstrung in terms of your options then. Note that you might be passionate about what you're doing now and you might be passionate about doing what you're doing 60 years from now. But you might not be. To use pg's metaphor, try to stay upwind. And if you want to learn more, read more. School ends at 3:00. You still have a lot of time to do what you will.

In addition -- no offense -- there is a reasonably high chance that you think you know more than you do. I'm not trying to say this to be an asshole -- I'm saying it because you won't be the first high school student to think you're wildly more competent, capable, or intelligent than you are. I run into students like that all the time and told a story about one here: http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your-professors%E2... . You might also be the next Bill Gates, but the odds are good that you're not. If you drop out of high school because of what people on the Internet tell you, you may mess your life up in substantial ways that won't be easy to undo.

and I want to start a business or go to college now, and start learning more.

These are somewhat vague goals: if you said, "Here's the URL for my business and where I want to go with it" or "I want to learn X, Y, and Z in college," you'd have a more compelling case. As it is, what the other posters have said is mostly good advice: work toward getting into college sooner, rather than later. I will also say that you might be able to get more out of high school classes than you think if you try hard enough to.

Good luck.

Absolutely NOT. Take as many AP classes as you can. They are generally college level. You will find it much easier to get into the schools you really want if you actually graduate. Despite what people may say, GED's don't carry the same social weight as diplomas. A high school diploma is itself nothing more than to say that you passed the base level of societal education, but many people consider a GED to mean that you we're not even capable of achieving that low-level rung.

Do what you can to graduate early. THAT looks good. If you can finish in 2 or 2.5 years what takes most of us 4 years, and you can do it with a very high GPA, that's just all gold stars right there.

The other thing to keep in mind about graduating with a diploma is that of grants and scholarships. College is going to be fucking expensive. I'm assuming you're 15-17 years old. So you might not understand what fucking expensive really means in your bones, beyond "that's a lot of money". Don't take this as an insult or anything. I'm 30 years old and it took until I was like 27 to really, really understand how much "fucking expensive" really is. For me it was moving from South Florida where I was making at most $30k to SF where I've been making 2.5-3x that much as a salary.

Anyway, grants and scholarships are free money you don't have to pay back later. And when you're 25 looking to start a career and whatnot, you'll really appreciate not having massive loan payments to pay on a monthly basis.

I'm currently in the middle of my 2nd startup, and since you are here on HN I'll put my argument in those terms. Look at high school as your first startup. The only way its going to succeed is based on how much work and sacrifice you're willing to put into it. If you can make it through that, many other things in your life will be much easier.

You may find some ideas in this that apply to your situation: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

why not just put forth enough effort to do well in your classes, and in your spare time, teach yourself how to do what you want to learn to do and start a business?

if you find high school trivial, you'll find community college isn't much better. and while university will be tougher, the curriculum is on rails. you'll find that once you graduate you may or may not have actually learned anything about what you really wanted to learn about.

experience is best.

Thanks.

I can't upvote this comment enough.

Elitism aside, high school curriculums are a joke. It will be easy, it will be a waste of time, and you probably won't learn much if you've already learned how to solve complex problems in abstract and invisible ways (programming).

That said, run the course and finish high school with a high GPA. Get the best technical degree from a college you can (of course money is an issue here, scholarships?) with some internships and a high-paced position at a growing start up and you'll be way on your way to success.

THOSE things said, take your spare energy and time to learn things that school or college won't teach you. For me, this was game programming, web design, n-teir architectures, SQL, databases, and web applications. None of this I learned in school, and I have a CS degree and graduated at the top of my class. Most well paying jobs with good opportunities require CS degress, but the Java-shop mentality they provide simply aren't enough to be successful.

Use your education as accreditation to get the attention you need from employers, and use your untapped potential and extra energy to gain the experience you need to stand out on a resume be an above-and-beyond contributor (I did this with experimental iPhone game development, web app development, check out www.scotthconner.com to see the projects I think fall under this category).

Finishing high-school is a must. Learning how to learn quickly and get shit done with little fuss is vital. Having a list of reasons you didn't finish school will count against you in every case.

I was in an early entrance program to U of North Texas back when highly-organized early entrance was a (very) newfangled creation. If you qualify for a large, on-campus early entrance program with plenty of kids your own age, you ought to go for it. If you Google for early entrance college, you'll find plenty of information.

The criteria for acceptance after 20-odd years of development of these programs correlates surprisingly well with whether or not someone your age ought to be in a more adult, independent setting. Thus, if you are accepted, that's a pretty good indicator that you're ready to go to the next level. If you aren't accepted, then you're probably not.

Having said that, you say that 70% of high school is spent pleasing other people and performing tasks of rote memorization that you don't think you'll ever use again. I have terrible news for you: 90% of most employment is about pleasing other people and rote memorization. Often the rote memorization is about memorizing the things that please other people so you can plan on doing them over and over again. In technical terms, it's called satisficing behavior. In real terms, it's why people demand to get paid to do their jobs.

Seriously though, early entrance. If you don't like high school and you can make it into something else, go for it. Go be with kids like you who want to do bigger things sooner. If it's appropriate for you, it's worth doing.

You don't need to drop out of high school to start a business. Do both at the same time.

No.

Just to add to the list of alternatives, I don't know where you live but several states have some sort of "talented and gifted" magnet school that might be more challenging/engaging for you. Many cities do as well, but you're probably well aware of local options.

There's also Bard College at Simon's Rock which accepts rising high school juniors and gives them a BA in 4 years (and is affiliated with a top tier liberal arts college). The timing for that is just about right.

Also, you may be interested to learn more about the "unschooling" movement. Some variation of that might be a good fit for you. Google "unschooling" or "John Taylor Gatto" for some background info.

Other people in this thread have discussed the drawbacks of a GED rather an a high school diploma, so I thought I'd share this one little anecdote:

One of my classmates in high school happened to have skipped a lot more grades than most. He was 12 in his junior year of high school, so I guess that made him 14 or 15 when he started college and around 19 when he graduated from undergrad.

He was a great kid. Clearly ridiculously smart but very modest and soft spoken. Everyone seem to like him. But he didn't really have "friends" per se. Everyone was nice to him, but everyone treated him like a kid brother.

I ran into him at our 15 year high school reunion and we had a long chat. Looking back on it as a happy, successful and established adult, one thing he clearly regretted about his life is that he never really had a college or a high school "experience", he just went to classes. And he regretted it.

My point is that there is more to the high school experience than what you're being taught in class. Sure, you can skip it, but be aware that you're trading away something with real value, sometimes even when it doesn't seem like it is. I don't think that should make your decision for you, but it's another thing to throw on the "no" side of the scales.

Also, I think the deck is generally stacked against you as 15 year old high school drop out trying to succeed as an entrepreneur. Gaining a little bit more life experience (quite possibly doing fun and exciting things that aren't like high school) might make you a better entrepreneur. You'll understand your customers, partners and employees better.

(inb4 "Fool, YC has had several successful 18/19 year old founders." I know. That's not the same situation as this.)

I'm an alumnus of Simon's Rock and highly recommend it. I went in thinking I would get my AA and transfer but I stayed for my BA. I'd be happy to answer any questions about the school.

It's technically still considered dropping out of high school though :)

There are a lot of social benefits to going into college at a typical age. Your social circles in college will be severely affected if you are much younger than everyone else.

I don't see the rush. I'm sure there are certain cases where it makes sense to skip ahead, but sounds like it's not a slam dunk in your case. Start a business in high school? Maybe enjoy the ride.

This was my father's view. Based on his negative feelings about having gone through school ahead of his age cohort, he didn't let any of his kids skip grades.

You should absolutely not drop out. Leave high school with a diploma, no matter what.

Do your best to stay in classes and graduate early. At the same time, you can work on something on the side. Time management is something that they dun teach in school. If things work out for your side project, hire someone to run things for you. That's something that they dun teach in school too. School is the place for you to meet people, social and build network. They will come in useful in the future.

Things to consider:

1) If you drop out (to work on a business), nobody's making you jump through hoops every day any more. It can take about a year to adjust to this. You'll probably be doing nothing useful for a while.

2) Doing real things in the real world is much, much harder than it looks. If you don't have visible achievements that make you employable, don't drop out.

Does being in school make you miserable? If so, compare that feeling to the way you think you would feel if the worst that could happen if you drop out actually happens. If the risk of dropping out doesn't bother you, there's your answer.

Today, start applying for early admission to colleges and universities.

In the short term, stay in school and don't use "it's pathetic" as an excuse for poor performance in your classes.

The better your grades, the better your chance of early admission.

If you give up on this now, you'll be giving up your whole life.

Keep kicking ass and get yourself in the best university possible. Like Noodle said "teach yourself" the other skills.

Find your passion and then go hard!

Take college courses at night. That's what I did in high school.

I think you should quit. Just self-teach, sit in on college courses to learn what you want to learn, and forge ahead.

Just be sure to set the bar high on the skills you self-teach, and go out of your way to find others like yourself who are motivated to skip the 6-10 year period of extended adolescence that our culture grants young adults to "find themselves".

Finding some people who you can collaborate with and who are roughly at the same stage as you socially/developmentally will help make life fun and exciting... and I've found that people who are roughly the same age tend to come to trust each other more easily, which is important in many business contexts.

If I had it to do over again I'd strongly consider dropping out of HS and focusing on learning and doing really cool stuff for a few years, possibly including a bit of travel to get a more global perspective, then when you're 18-23ish be sure to head to a college town find some interesting people who are in college and maybe sit in on a few of their classes or even enroll for a term or two as a non-degree / part time student to meet people and get a taste of the college experience.

When I think back to all the mind numbing hours of high school and all the stupid social stuff I don't wish it on anyone. It's way overrated. If you're not a jock you're just learning how to be content being a second class citizen, which is not a skill anyone should learn.

Hmm, this is well-written yet downvoted to -2. I think grandalf is right.

School is supposed to be about knowledge, but more and more it's becoming about going through the motions to get an overvalued piece of paper. You could take those many hours you would waste in school and put them to more productive use: building cool stuff, learning about more important things, etc. There's not much school can teach you that Wikipedia can't. I think having an impressive portfolio would be way more valuable than an Ivy League diploma.

I dropped out of college after two years. My parents gave me what was left of my college fund (about $20,000) and I lived off that for a few years. I have yet to hit profitability, but I think I will. And I know I've learned more on my own than I would've learned in school. And if I had to, I think the stuff I've built and the skills I've gained would make it easy enough to get a decent job. Maybe you could make a similar deal with your parents (they give you the money they would've spent on college and you live off of it for several years).

You definitely need to solve the money issue somehow. If you don't have it, you're liable to get stuck in a dead end job. And you definitely shouldn't do this unless you've got what it takes to educate yourself and do good work without someone forcing you to.

Probably the most important thing you get out of school and college is interacting with other smart people on a regular basis. Find some other way of doing that and you should be good.

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