i would be a sophomore in college rn had i actually enrolled somewhere, but i passed on it, as did 2 of my close friends. all 3 of us had different experiences:
friend X is lazy and jumps from job to job as he has trouble holding one due to poor attendance. when he gets fired or just quits, he may wait months before even applying at a different place. he drives a beat up turd that he doesn't maintain, has almost no hobbies, has no savings, and no motivation. he is highly dependent on his parents. although he is going to college this winter, for the same stuff i currently do. you do not want to be like friend X
friend Y is hardworking and motivated-- he knows where he wants to go in life, and, while he isn't the most intelligent person and lacks the skills to give him a good head start, he's trying his hardest to take the steps to get there and doing a pretty good job. he has little to no support from his trashy parents; his only connections to them are the shared car insurance policy and cell plans, which he's working on changing. he drives a nice used luxury car which he can make payments for no problem. he hates debt, he budgets himself, does a lot of research, and builds up his savings. he currently has no concrete plans to go to college, but he doesn't need to yet. be like friend Y
then there's my story: thanks to my efforts and probably more so from having by chance the right connections, i landed a career as a software dev for a small company at age 17 with a dream of becoming a software engineer/architect. at this point, i decided to skip out on college bc i would just work my way up in this company, and i have been. but honestly, after sitting behind a desk 45 hr/wk staring at screen for two years i've decided i really wouldn't prefer to work in the IT department for the rest of my life. in fact, i've come to hate talking about programming & rarely find enjoyment in programming ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ regardless, my spending habits are the same as friend Y's if not more frugal; as such i've never had problems paying for rent, bills - whatever - and i've got lots of cash in my savings. my plan is to focus on buying a house next year and figure out what i really want with my life, then i'll worry about throwing myself into mad debt for college. i will admit though that i reallllyyy miss the social aspect of school
tl;dr: imo skip college/uni for now and work on building up yourself and your savings, maybe take the SAT/ACT until you score higher so you can save loads on tuition. try to weigh out what you have to gain/lose by not going to school
