I have a different perspective (though a few of the comments here have briefly touched on it). College is not for meeting like-minded peers, and it's not for l

I have a different perspective (though a few of the comments here have briefly touched on it). College is not for meeting like-minded peers, and it's not for learning about programming. Rather, it's for the opposite. It's for meeting diverse people that will give you new and unexpected perspectives on life. It's for learning to work with humanities people, meeting international students, etc. It's for learning how you fit in to everything else. I don't think it's too controversial anymore to say that most of the greatest innovations come from multidisciplinary pursuits. You won't get this if you sit at home and code. IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and much of the Silicon Valley community looks for T-Shaped people. A light working (horizontal) knowledge of many subjects, and a deep knowledge of one subject. You will inevitably get your depth of knowledge in coding whether or not you go to college. But will you really learn how everything fits together? Oh, and college is FUN, even if UW is a Pac-10 rival :)