Today in America the GED and Diploma are literally of equal value, you can apply to any job that doesn’t require a college degree with just a GED including Government Jobs.
The optimal strategy therefor is simply to drop out after the 10th grade, complete the training in person or online and then take the test and take advantage of living with your parents.
They can’t charge you rent, can’t force you to buy your own food, they legally can not punish you financially in any way so find a job save up every penny in an interest earning checking account.
You’ll earn between $31,200 AND $91,520 depending on the minimum wage. Not including tips above the minimum.
Once turning 18 you can either
a. Go to the local community college finish your general education
b. Stay with the same business and get an apartment
or
c. Apply to better paying job with your 2 years of experience.
11th and 12th grade are pointless because you 100% have already leaned all you need to and they give you no advantage for finishing.
How’d you get I to a fairly prestigious school with no education. I find that hard to believe as the competition would be great and someone with a below grade six education seems far fetched.
Homeschooling. And I got a high score (apparently a 28 is “high”) on my ACT. (The ACT is a test colleges give to assess how “admissible” you are in the U.S. Not sure how different other countries are.) In my state, a high enough ACT score gets you out of highschool the same way a GED does. And a lot of student financial aid is based on ACT score. (Oh, another footnote. My “full ride” didn’t cover room and board. Just books and tuition. But I commuted to college all four years, I also got a separate grant from the National Science Foundation, and I qualified for a Pell Grant. So yeah. Had no trouble paying for college in my case.)
I didn’t say I didn’t get any education after 3rd grade or so. I said I “dropped out of school.” Admittedly a bit misleading wording. The way I put it made it sound as if I quit school without the support of my parents and didn’t pursue any further education. But I also wanted to make the point that leaving school (the way the OP talks about) definitely doesn’t necessarily mean quitting studies.
But yeah. When I said “true story”, I meant it. Never was really traditionally “enrolled” in a full coursework of traditional schooling after my 10th birthday until entering college. There was a weekly “homeschool co-op” that I went to for a few years that was kinda school-like. And I did take a couple of like one-day-a-week classes at a private school at one point. I do remember taking part in a summer educational thing that took place in a public school building in my area. Oh, and I forgot that I took a couple of college courses dual-enrolled before I entered college full time. But still, the vast majority of my studies were self study. Taught myself highschool calculus and chemistry and such. My grandmother had to force the issue a bit with history and spelling. But it all seems to have worked.
I guess maybe to finish the story, after college, I started a tech startup with another guy. It crashed and burned within 5 years, but taught me so much that college didn’t. (I hate coming off like the self-help crypto-investor startup bro, but I suppose you could call it “failing forward.” Not that I planned it that way ahead of time or anything.) And now I’m making a comfortable income overseeing a team of developers (not in a managerial sense, but as a “tech lead”, which suits me just fine) at a big-ish (brick-and-morter-and-e-)retailer. I’m quite happy with all the above, of course. As I said, I don’t think my experience is typical at all. I’ve lived a very charmed and lucky life in a lot of ways. But also, My story shows that the traditional educational path of “stay in school kids” isn’t the only way, and may not always be the best way to traditional “success” in academics. I’ve also had coworkers doing software engineering with no college education.