I just got in from an exhausting commute so I only read the first page and will make this (for once!) brief. As everybody seems to have said: stay in school. Stopping would be the worst career move you could make. While minimums are indeed low these days, those minimums are conditional. You don't see a whole lot of 250/25 hour guys and gals being hired off the street; they either have an advanced degree (i.e. BS or to a certain extent AS) or a jet bridge course (eh) or both (or something that serves the same purpose as doing both, i.e. aviation degree). Airlines hiring people at 250/25 understand that while your experience level is low, the fact that you are capable of learning in an advanced environment/accelerated program means that you'll be more likely to learn from the fire hose that is newhire training. They certainly hire people who haven't done the above and have 250/25, but it's certainly not the norm, and it's usually because that person happened to have done something else that proves that they are trainable.

All that about minimums being said, minimums can change overnight. You could go to your airline and be furloughed before training (has actually happened) because of downsizing or some other factor. You could stay in college and right as you graduate the entire industry could go into a downturn and you could wait a couple years to get hired. Of course, it could also go into a downturn tomorrow and then right before you graduate accelerate again. You never know.

And of course, forgetting about all the things that I've said above, the trend in the industry has been towards MORE formal education being required for pilots, not the other way around. There are people getting hired at majors and regionals alike (good ones) without degrees, but the vast majority of them have some sort of degree. Also, if only 1% of applicants who get the good jobs don't have degrees today, think about what it's going to be like in 5, 10, 15, etc years?

Don't forget, it's extremely tempting to jump on this industry, because it cyclically has times of the "pulse" interview and the times where you couldn't get a job flying a Baron unless you had letters of recommendation from the CP, VP of Flight Ops, and the CEO's college roommate. But with all that temptation and uncertainty in the industry, the people who are going to graduate this spring had the same dilemma three and a half years ago, and the people who graduated then had the same dilemma seven and a half years ago, and so on. Do what's best for the long term, and remember, it's not like flying is an unrewarding profession unless you get to fly an ERJ or CRJ. So what if by the time you graduate the regionals aren't hiring? Even if you have shiny jet syndrome, so what if you "HAVE" to CFI for a year before getting hired in a turbine multi? In the scope of things, is a year really that much when you're talking about a 35+ year career in flying?

Plus, I know for a FACT that east Washington has an active GA population. Just cause you have all your licenses and that hiring seems to be at a frenzy right now doesn't mean that flying jobs will come to your door begging you to apply. You may have to spend some time not only at YOUR airport, but at other airports around you. And look in Trade-A-Plane. They have all sorts of GA, low time, part time jobs available and advertised.

Well there you go. A "brief" post, just like the rest of all of my posts.