[Max Combined]

"I took a number of advanced courses in 11th and 12th grades that have broadened my education."

Any reason that you could not take those classes at a community college? My daughter is studying chemical engineering at Rice, but she went to community college at 15. She went to community college for three years and got over 90 credits and she took all sorts of classes to broaden her education that she would not have taken had she gone straight into Chemical Engineering, since so much of the Chemical Engineering course work is prescribed by the department.

At community college she took things like extra English classes, accounting, economics, private voice lessons, Spanish, as well as all the calculus, physics, and chemistry classes that permit her to take a lighter load at Rice.

[Ciexyz]

My daughter is studying chemical engineering at Rice, but she went to community college at 15.

Kudos to your daughter for all her hard work, and here's wishing her success in her career.

Not everyone can afford to bypass free high school classes to attend community college in lieu of HS. And in HS the student has extended time to concentrate on a discipline, for ex., nine months to master a foreign language vs. a three-month course in college. There's no way that a first year college language course (ex., Spanish I) is equivalent to a full nine months of study in HS. This is the best way to give a student a thorough grounding in disciplines such as foreign languages.

I can testify to this fact. I studied two foreign languages in high school, then started a third from scratch at college, and nothing beats the intense language study at the HS level.