Leaving the country to apply as international. Also, what did you get on SATs?

Say you took your SATs and your scores were:

Critical Reading - 760
Math- 690
Writing- 740

You have a 4.0 in your school, but you're not valedictorian. In fact, you're 53rd out of 340 because you screwed around your first two years of school because you thought you weren't gonna be able to go to college. You were depressed most of the time and thought about suicide. You were a mediocre student. Anyway, now that college application time is over, you didn't apply because the dream act didn't pass. Now you're thinking things over. You want to apply, except this time, legally.

Would you go back to your home country to apply? Do you think that the consulate would give you a student visa knowing your background?

Note that you're 17, not yet an adult, and will leave the states prior to being 18.

Mediocre student? Those SAT scores are not mediocre. My physics teacher, who was once a professor at SDSU I believe and helped with admissions, said that colleges will first look at your SAT score and will use GPA mostly for tie-breakers or borderline people. SAT shows more intelligence than GPA.

As for your questions, it really depends on the country.

where are you at? if you leave trust me u aint gonna come back

The consulate will never give you visa if they know that you have overstayed in U.S.

You won't face the 10 year ban though.

go toschool here, get a teacher to help you out

how could you get 4.0 in highschool and screw around in the first 2 years?

AP classes FTW! I've got a 4.2.

Indeed.
I took a ton my junior and senior year.

I was mediocre in the sense that I only got 89s, to 84s.

You will get banned from US for 3yrs if you leave now. If you leave next yr when you turn 18, you will get banned for 10 yrs. Even when you go back to your country and apply for student visa 3yrs later, you need to get sponsored by college that you get accepted from. That college will look at your bank account to make sure you can pay tuition. Let's say it cost $20K/yr + $10K for dorm for public college. That's $30K x 4yrs = $120K. That means you will need at least $120K in your bank account when applying for student visa 3 yrs later.