You have more opportunities to travel when you are in college and don't have a full time job. You can go abroad, participate in traveling teams or groups of kids going to competitions. A lot of what you are doing can be done in college.

The thing is, college isn't hard, it's easy. That's why for someone like you, it would be a great experience.

Your real reason for not going came out in the comments---it's expensive and you don't want debt. With these experiences you've written about, you'll be able to get into a great school and most likely with a scholarship. Your blog post would make a kick-ass admissions essay to Harvard.

It seems like you already know there are ways to minimize the cost of college via scholarship, financial aid, and working hard during college. Many people do this.

You are really arguing that college isn't worth the effort, yet at the same time you are no stranger to hard work. So, there's really no reason for you not to go to college. Working hard, which you are all about apparently, is all you need to do to ensure it's a net positive decision.

You have to have money to do aforementioned traveling. To this day I don't understand how people can just travel all the time and spend money while they are in college unless they use loan money or have wealthy parents. I don't want to do number one, and number two isn't true. Again, they both have their pros and cons, I just am choosing the lesser tried path.

Number three: unlike humanities majors, someone with CS skills can make serious money freelancing while doing well in school. I more meant programs that are funded by the school---otherwise, you'd pay for it the same way you do now.

It sounds like you are willing to self-reflect and haven't absolutely closed of all options. Best of luck.