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Free College Hack: In high school, I had a rough time with family stuff and my grades started to slack. I knew that getting a scholarship would be crucial if I

Free College Hack: In high school, I had a rough time with family stuff and my grades started to slack. I knew that getting a scholarship would be crucial if I wanted to go to college in the future. However, my grades simply weren't going to cut it for the Florida Lottery Bright Futures scholarship. I needed a 3.5+ GPA, a 1250+ SAT score, and 60 hours of community service in order to get their best 100% scholarship. At the rate I was going, my GPA wouldn't be near that. So I did some research, and I found out that the Bright Futures Scholarship was also applicable to home schooled students. Intrigued, I researched a bit into what made up a home schooled student's GPA. I found a legal loophole here. One of the ways that the State of Florida graded home schooled students was by letting them talk to a psychologist. The psychologist said you were performing at a grade level, and you graduated. Grades were simply "made up". So I dropped out of high school end of sophomore year, and created my own home schooled program. Which basically consisted of building a boat, programming, and volunteering at ECHO (echonet.org) In dropping out, I basically had two years to practice taking the SAT's in order to get above a 1270. I scored a 1280 and got a 100% free ride into any State school. But by the time I'd spent 2 years out of the educational system, I'd decided a year of living in the rain forest would be better than partying at school. So I turned down the scholarship and moved to the Panamanian rain forest instead.

mcrittenden 16y ago
Geez, awesome story. How was the rain forest? Motivation for moving there? Do you regret turning down the scholarship?
- burningion 16y ago
  Rain forest was incredible. Howler monkeys put me to sleep every night, and I never had such vivid of dreams as I did when living there. Motivation for moving there: Just something I felt like I needed to do. I kind of developed my own alternative college course, which consisted of traveling the world a bit and learning a few salable skills along the way. Do I regret turning down the scholarship: Long story short, no. I knew I wanted to eventually be in business for myself, and I knew the field I was interested in (programming) wasn't being adapted quickly enough by higher education. I figured I'd be much better off coding my own projects and learning from there. Basically, I had a realization that there were two types of people in the world: those who expected the world to act a certain way, (ie going to school, getting educated == guaranteed success) and those who supposed the world was open to influence (ie create your own reality). I decided that I would rather take responsibility for creating my own world. It was definitely a painful experience at times, but has been worth it. Now I'm working at a company I love doing incredibly challenging work with people who are incredible. So no, I don't regret it.
  - bgraves 16y ago
    Wow! This all sounds incredible! You should write a book about it all...very intriguing.
- sp4rki 16y ago
  Just an FYI. Panama City is a city like all other cities in any developed country. Most of the provinces are equivalent to "towns". If you do move to somewhere in Panama that does not qualify for this description, you're basically living in a real rainforest LOST style. With the amount of bugs you get in a rainforest, I'd regret not taking the scholarship if that's the case :)
lionhearted 16y ago
I did something similar - I'd already dropped out of high school, so I went to an adult education high school, told them I was emancipated from my parents and thus legally an adult, and could I get an adult degree? I took some tests, filled out some packets, and got almost a 4.0 GPA in the span of around two months. I then scored in the 1200's on the SAT (near perfect verbal, quite bad math since I never got above algebra before dropping out), and got an almost full ride scholarship to UMass (needed to take some loans). I dropped out my Sophomore year when I realized college was as lame as high school, and worked full time on entrepreneurship. Luckily I'd met an older guy who thought I was bright and a hard worker, so we business partnered and built a company that went through some iterations, and that paid my way through life. Later I went and paid cash to study business.
danielson 16y ago
I opened an account so that I could ▲ your story. Thank you.
Stevenup7002 16y ago
Great story!

mcrittenden 16y ago

Geez, awesome story. How was the rain forest? Motivation for moving there? Do you regret turning down the scholarship?

burningion 16y ago
Rain forest was incredible. Howler monkeys put me to sleep every night, and I never had such vivid of dreams as I did when living there. Motivation for moving there: Just something I felt like I needed to do. I kind of developed my own alternative college course, which consisted of traveling the world a bit and learning a few salable skills along the way. Do I regret turning down the scholarship: Long story short, no. I knew I wanted to eventually be in business for myself, and I knew the field I was interested in (programming) wasn't being adapted quickly enough by higher education. I figured I'd be much better off coding my own projects and learning from there. Basically, I had a realization that there were two types of people in the world: those who expected the world to act a certain way, (ie going to school, getting educated == guaranteed success) and those who supposed the world was open to influence (ie create your own reality). I decided that I would rather take responsibility for creating my own world. It was definitely a painful experience at times, but has been worth it. Now I'm working at a company I love doing incredibly challenging work with people who are incredible. So no, I don't regret it.
- bgraves 16y ago
  Wow! This all sounds incredible! You should write a book about it all...very intriguing.
sp4rki 16y ago
Just an FYI. Panama City is a city like all other cities in any developed country. Most of the provinces are equivalent to "towns". If you do move to somewhere in Panama that does not qualify for this description, you're basically living in a real rainforest LOST style. With the amount of bugs you get in a rainforest, I'd regret not taking the scholarship if that's the case :)

lionhearted 16y ago

I did something similar - I'd already dropped out of high school, so I went to an adult education high school, told them I was emancipated from my parents and thus legally an adult, and could I get an adult degree? I took some tests, filled out some packets, and got almost a 4.0 GPA in the span of around two months. I then scored in the 1200's on the SAT (near perfect verbal, quite bad math since I never got above algebra before dropping out), and got an almost full ride scholarship to UMass (needed to take some loans). I dropped out my Sophomore year when I realized college was as lame as high school, and worked full time on entrepreneurship. Luckily I'd met an older guy who thought I was bright and a hard worker, so we business partnered and built a company that went through some iterations, and that paid my way through life. Later I went and paid cash to study business.

danielson 16y ago

I opened an account so that I could ▲ your story. Thank you.

Stevenup7002 16y ago

Great story!