While most of her peers are going to be graduating from high school in three or so years, Gabi Sciuchetti will be accepting a different kind of diploma – a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington.

Currently, Gabi is a sophomore at UW based on the amount of credits she has earned, and she’s barely 15 years old. On top of being four years ahead on her education, she also made the dean’s list for the 2014 fall quarter, earning at least a 3.5 grade point average.

Gabi, from Covington, attended the Early Entrance Program at The Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars at UW during the 2013-2014 school year. This transition school enabled her to skip high school and start earning college credits in spring 2014.

After the program finished, she immediately dove head-first into college by starting full time in the summer of 2014.

But, she says, it’s not all about studying and classes, she also participates in several extracurricular activities. She’s an actor in the drama society for students with early acceptance and she’s also a mentor for students going through the transition school that she finished last spring.

She plans to apply for the engineering major at the end of the year, specifically aeronautical and astronautical engineering.

Gabi said she’s almost done with the prerequisites for her bachelor’s degree.

In addition to her studies, she’s also getting some hands-on experience.

“Right now I’m actually working in a lab doing research,” Gabi said in a phone interview.

The research is in the realm of mechanical engineering and focuses on microspheres. The technology developed as a result of the research could potentially be used to create something like an invisibility cloak, she said.

In addition, Gabi has already completed a job shadow at an aeronautical company. Which, she said, should help her with her application for the engineering major.

Gabi plans to go to graduate school when she’s done at UW. But, there could be a roadblock in her way and it probably won’t be her grades.

Scott, Gabi’s dad, said she’s too young for a lot of the scholarships for grad school.

“She is going to have to come up with some scholarships for her school to continue,” he said. “She has the problem of being too young to apply for many of them as they are geared toward the high school seniors.”

Despite the fact that Gabi would start grad school a few months before her 18th birthday and all of her friends would be just starting college, she said she doesn’t feel like she’s jumping ahead of everyone.

Scott agreed and said he thinks it’s good timing.

“I kind of look at it this way, she will be starting a new college the same time as many kids her age start. They will just be attending different classes,” he said.

She also said she doesn’t think she’s missing out on anything by not having the high school experience her friends describe to her.

She said high school seems to be “mostly focused on sports and drama… and I get plenty of that here.”

Gabi still lives in Covington with her parents, Traci and Scott, and her younger brother, Antonio, who has ocular albinism, which makes him legally blind. Gabi must have handed her brainpower down to her brother because he, like his sister, also skipped a grade in school. He’s a 10-year-old sixth grader.

The commute for Gabi to get to Seattle can be long, ranging from one to three hours on a metro bus, but it is necessary because she’s not yet old enough by UW’s standards – 17 – to live on campus, Scott said.

Her days are long, too. Gabi wakes up at 6 a.m. most mornings and doesn’t return home until 7 or 8 p.m. That’s longer than most adults’ work days.

Being 15, Gabi won’t be getting a part time job during the summer. Instead, she’ll continue to take classes at UW, full time. She’s on track to graduate from UW in the spring of 2018, but if she continues to take classes over her summer breaks, she’ll most likely graduate even earlier.