[dallasgutauckis]

When you say "require a degree to even apply", what do you mean? How do you know? Is this one of those cases where it just says, "BA in CS or equivalent experience" as one of the line-items? If so, ignore that. Submit a résumé.

I dropped out of college my first year. I'm not going to say it works for everyone (or even most people) -- I had a LOT of experience before college -- but it's possible it may work for you. Though, what I will say is the same thing someone will recommend down the road when you're looking for a new job: don't quit before you've secured your next position.

Consider looking toward startups where degrees tend to be less important -- corporate cultures tend to lean on degrees too much as a means for filtering candidates, and it's probably not the type of place you want to be anyhow.