Dylan D'Angelo, 17, will be a senior at Leonia High School in New Jersey this fall. And while many of his peers will be thinking about applying to four-year colleges, D'Angelo day-dreams about shearing his own path to pursue something he loves: cutting hair.

The soon-to-be-senior from Leonia, NJ, just miles from the George Washington Bridge, started cutting his own hair two years ago to keep it short for swimming. Both he and his twin brother Max are on the swim team. Soon he was cutting Max's hair, too. Then a friend wanted in.

Now, D'Angelo has a half-dozen customers (the cuts are free). But he said his parents have cut his hair-clipping aspirations short.

"I was looking at the Aveda Institute," D'Angelo said on a recent afternoon after cutting a friend's hair. "[It's] like a hair cutting school, a barbery school. But my parents don't really want that. They want a four-year-school, a degree."

In New Jersey, just over 80,000 of the almost 95,000 graduating students in 2010 were college bound, according to the New Jersey Department of Education. Of those who graduate, about 5,000 high school grads go straight to work. And about 2,000 go on to other education.

D'Angelo said he isn't sure what he wants to do and that four years at college "seems like a long time to stay in one place." He said he gets decent grades and his favorite subject is art.

D'Angelo said it would be "pretty cool" to have his own barber shop someday. But he wasn't sure about the commitment.

"You're there forever, though, until you retire," he said, "which is a pretty long way."