Well, for starters, I'm from Canada, and went to a Canadian university. I dropped out in 7th grade, and in lieu of a diploma or a GED (I couldn't write one until I was 19), I wrote the SATs and took programming classes at Community College, doing well enough to convince the math department at my university to start me out in a trial period.

I took two classes per term in my first year, and I got A+'s. When I called up the dean of science to thank him for letting me in, I found out that he had died of a heart attack. Before passing away, however, apparently he had enrolled me full-time. From that point on I was a full, legitimate student.

I know several people who have gone into college with a GED, and a few others that went into college before they graduated highschool. Some were in the USA, though it was markedly fewer. Often you have to talk with the math departments to get anywhere.

Scholarships are quite attainable in college, but since the tuition is much cheaper in Canada it makes more of a difference. You can also win summer research studentships, and these are lucrative enough on a student budget as well. Finally you can get paid to tutor, mark assignments, and teach classes.

Ahh, so you assassinated the dean of science, and counterfeited his paperwork! Seriously though, thanks for replying.

I did actually take classes at a Community College at the same time as when I was in high school, and I really hated it. It was academically like high school and socially like a Dilbertesque job (especially the programming classes). Worst of all, it led me to think that I don't like math. After a couple of years, I accidentally came across a textbook on mathematical logic and proofs, and it was like being hit on the head with a brick. I thought, "Why did they hide this stuff from me?". No wonder math had been frustrating--it wasn't really math, any more than using Windows is computer science.

Anyway! There are bad things in my Community College transcript. I wonder if that will hinder me, or if I have the option of just pretending it never happened...

Is there something special about math departments in universities (less corruption? a lot of influence?), or did you just guess, correctly, that I wanted to study math?

You totally have the option of just pretending community college never happened. Just don't mention that you were ever there.

I got fairly lucky with community college: there was another really bright student there. He coded a 3d engine in ASM. So I learned a lot from him.

I didn't guess that you wanted to study math, though it's not much of a guess that you'd like it.

The thing about math departments at research universities is that the field has largely been written by ex-prodigies (each textbook seems to include a mini-bio on galois...), and they don't care much for rules or structure since much of the faculty had to struggle with such artificial things anyway.

So I tended to have a lot of luck talking with math departments. I was quite a writer back then too -- better than the pupils of the English department, it seemed, but there I really doubt I would have gained the traction I had gained with the math department.

By the way, if you don't read Scott Aaronson or Terry Tao, I strongly suggest that you do -- they're wonderful bloggers, and Scott has a terrific (though unfinished) set of notes called Quantum Computing since Democritus. A book you might really like is "What is mathematics" by Courant -- it's wonderful.