GeneralHandkerchief: I'll tell you straight up: it's all just senioritis.

Tell people to shut up, tell them you don't know what you're going to do five years from now -- much less ten years, or the rest of your life. Tell them that's a very good thing, since it means you're not wasting your life on some well-worn, overused path. Tell them you want to do it your way and then just take it slow and easy. Those pamphlets are pretty, there are a lot of them, but in the end you won't really make your decision on them anyway.

You won't truly "find yourself" under the pressured environment of a college-going high school senior. Ever. Not unless you already figured it out long before this year. Don't even try.* Just find a relatively cheap good well-rounded college near you and get in.

*except those special cases involving Winthrop Horace Stanton III and his Ivy League alumni daddy

Honestly, a high school class compare to college is like a whole different level. The latter is far quicker, far more diverse, far more...useful. It can even be fun if you get lucky with a good lecturer at hand. It's a rather different experience compare to high school, so it isn't really yet another extension that you're thinking it is.

Me, I'm a Freshman proudly taking Husar's path. I take it easy. I got admitted to much better universities than where I am now (MSU, UW, etc. Quite amusingly, just about every one of them I submitted my applications -- and wrote my essays -- near the very last minute. They were avant-garde. ), but since I couldn't pay for those I just stay where I am for the time being. May be next year I'll move, may be the year after. Who knows? I screwed up my senior year (a grand total of 0 scholarships attempted Not to boast, but I think I could've gotten a whole bunch of them if I tried. That's what pressure does to your motivation, see? :P) and even then I still don't regret it, because what I do is most definitely my choice.

On the whole statistics thing. Well, to put it simply, on average they're absolutely correct. A college graduate is in a much better position compare to a high school graduate. The latter path is, in my opinion, best taken if you already know what you love with all the earnestness in your heart; not a very common thing I believe.