16 years old and an aspiring physicist

[CalcNerd]

The people who suggest the local CC are correct, it is a great way to prepare for an advanced degree. Your problem might be getting into the CC without getting a GED first (equivalent to HS diploma) although the CC might wave that requirement. I would avoid the Homeschooling option unless your parents are very well educated. It will make all of your learning hard and uphill. Sometime even trivial knowledge is Hard earned without knowledgeable guidance. Sadly the reverse is also true, I had a brilliant (so others said, and I would be inclined to agree) physics professor in college, but he SUCKED as an instructor. When I asked questions, he would state, "That's obvious, and I can't waste class time on that." Or that I should consult this text or that (often a class text I did not own, because I had not taken the referenced course).

I had Lab partner with only a sophomore High school education before he was admitted to the university for an EE program.

It will be harder for you until you finish your first year. Physics will require you to read a lot and do a lot of home work. I would suggest you do take as many science and chemistry classes that your local CC offers. You might also consider engineering classes as well.

Often High school students go to college to become scientists (sounds glamorous) and then discover engineering (pays better - on average) and go that route.

 

[arrowpusher96]

If anybody tells you it's too late, they're wrong. Very wrong. No, you won't go to MIT. That's fine. Barely scraping by at a "big-name" school is not nearly as good as getting good grades at a big, no-name state school. Not to mention, if you do well in community college(assuming your state has some "big-name" government schools) you can go to many prestigious universities(Here in Virginia you can attend UVA,VT and WM coming from community college.). From someone who has attended community college and university(actually 2 universities), there is no difference except the amount of individual attention. Difficulty varies much more professor-professor then it does school to school. If you want to prove it to yourself, go ahead and pick a few classes from a hat, Google their name followed by "MIT exam" or "Stanford Exam" etc and the same for your prospective school. You'll see, there's little difference.

People are obsessed with prestige, yet it has little to do with your success(Especially in the sciences.). I go to a giant university with very little prestige, but there's tons of active research, the professors really care about students and the quality of the education is great. I've compared my exams to MIT's exams for the same classes, and mine were harder! This is not a secret, if you get straight A's, you can do well, at any accredited university in the USA. For example, I know someone doing research with a professor from Berkeley who's been published in Nature(A really big scientific journal.) who goes to my school.

Frankly, it makes me very angry; I walk into our giant chemistry building with hundreds of millions in funding, >70 grad students, and dozens of research labs with professors puttering about, and I find it mighty hard to believe that some ivy league school which gives 2%(Hyperbole.) of it's money to sciences is somehow better than my 75% acceptance rate school.

 

[arrowpusher96]

My CC doesn't offer an Associates of Science in Physics program, however it does contain many courses that are necessary to obtain said degree thus allowing me to transfer to a university and earn an Associates there. I do believe they have an Associates of Mathematics in Calculus degree though, would that be worthwhile? This process is completely foreign to me so I appreciate you enlightening me.

As others have said, you don't need an associate's, but they are seen preferably. I've seen people waste a lot of time getting them, because they're advised to, but often times they take many unnecessary classes. I'd highly, highly recommend looking at the requirements for the degree you want, and if those don't match up to a program at the local CC, go ahead and just start checking those classes off the list until you exhaust what you can take at CC and apply for transfer. They'll accept you if you have good grades. It's what I did, and I transferred with 29 credits.