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A Homeschooler Applies to College
I have six tadpoles, all of whom have been or currently are homeschooled, the oldest of whom is a college junior and the youngest of whom is a third grader in our own Edith Stein Academy. Right now, our high school senior and I are engaged in college application fun. I thought it might be of some interest to the Ricochetti to hear what the process is like for home schooling families like the one here in Toad Hall.
College Prep
My goal for my high school students is a rigorous college prep course with plenty of math and science and plenty of humanities. For math, my current high school senior did some of the Saxon math courses for high school, this outstanding and extremely fun geometry text, and is currently taking college calculus for credit at a local community college (he got an A the fall semester! Woo hoo!). His older brother, a super-duper smarty pants with perfect SAT scores, did the same math course, started college calculus a year earlier in 11th grade in conjunction with computer science at the community college, and had four semesters of college level math and credits by the time he completed high school (Calc I, II, III, and Discrete Math).
My current senior’s science course work included physical science, biology, and chemistry, all with labs. We used these texts, although I would have preferred something better. They did the job well enough of imparting the information and were easy to teach to homeschoolers. I taught two of these classes to him and a small group of other students while biology was taught by another mom.
Throughout middle school and high school, I combine history/geography with literature, and his high school course work started with the ancient history, Greece and Rome, in which we read translations of Homer, Plutarch, Thucydides, Sophocles, as well as more modern things like Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and even “Pygmalion.” Then he studied medieval history, comparing the rise of England and Spain, read “The Ballad of the White Horse,” “Beowulf,” and Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples. We read “Song of Roland” and “El Cid.” His junior year focused on American history. We read Ben Franklin’s biography, David McCullough’s John Adams, Richard Brookhiser’s Founding Father, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Witness, and other books. This senior year calls for government for one semester and economics for the other. For government, we use Declaration Statesmanship, which has the student reading Federalist Papers and Tocqueville. The economics course will cover Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson as well as Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
I use Latin as the foreign language of choice here in Edith Stein Academy. I have been learning it with my students, since my previous foreign language study was French, German, and Japanese. My senior has only had two years of high school Latin, but he is very involved in music and we allowed him to overload on that during the past three years. However, his sister, a high school sophomore, is in her third year of high school Latin, for her interests are different. She will almost certainly also take calculus at the community college level her senior year, where she will also take physics or another science course.
We also make sure our students have a strong physical education, art training, religion study (the students and I are Catholic but they have a Jewish heritage as well), and an opportunity to work in the community, either as volunteer or hired labor. This current senior is an outstanding musician and has played in multiple ensembles for several years, putting in easily 10 hours a week just on rehearsals, never mind lessons, individual practice, or performance. Several ensembles are through the community college, which means that he is also getting college credit for them.
One of my big concerns as a homeschooling parent was the lack of opportunity for a musician to play in orchestra or band, but in fact my son has done more exciting things then he might have done had he been playing in a high school band. He is generally playing with very professional and demanding musicians who are adults, not with other teenagers. It required much more leg work and outreach on our part to find the opportunities, but they are well worth it.
Some Important Differences for the Parent
In traditional high school, the student has a guidance counselor. The homeschool parent needs to be more proactive.
The PSAT is a test typically taken in the fall of the junior year. This test is the criteria for the National Merit Scholarship (which, if I may brag for a moment, my oldest son was a Finalist and awarded a Scholarship). In order to register for this, a parent needs to contact the school district, which administers this test.
The SAT is run by a different company, the College Board, and the registration for that test is online, so is pretty much the same for homeschoolers as regular students. My students have not taken the ACT test, so I have no familiarity with it.
I need to generate transcripts for my students. As a homeschooler in New York State, I am subject to regulations that require me to submit a detailed Individualized Home Instruction Plan (IHIP) for each student each year, and to submit quarterly reports on the student throughout the year. I know some families that homeschool under the radar, and while part of me cheers them on, to do so creates additional problems down the road that I choose to avoid through compliance. Since I am actively pursuing a college prep course for my high school students, generating a transcript is not too difficult and is made easier by my IHIPs.
In fact, if any potential or current homeschoolers want to look at my transcript or IHIP format, I would be happy to share, just PM me. Another mom shared her format with me some years ago and I love to pass on the favor.
Let me just say that as a homeschooler, I am aware that a college admission officer might be skeptical about the value of Mommy’s grading system, so I really want to make sure that my students have outside grades that can corroborate their abilities. This we accomplish through community college coursework. This past year, in fact, New York State has reduced the college credit rates for homeschooled or high school students to only $55 per credit, which is really lovely. My son is taking 9 credits right now, in Calculus, Music Theory, and the aforementioned ensembles.
Finally, some college applications require a letter of recommendation from the guidance counselor, which means me. They also require letters from teachers, which could be tough if a student has now had teachers apart from Mom or Dad. My children have always had art teachers, music teachers, work supervisors, volunteer supervisors, as well as community college professors to call on for these kinds of needs, and in point of fact we participate in activities with at least half an eye toward college applications, so this has not been a concern.
One of my final jobs as homeschooling mom is to obtain a letter of completion from the school district. The regs specify what credits are required, so I lay it all out easy for the school district after I have submitted my final paperwork in order to obtain it. I cannot award a diploma, but my students graduate from Edith Stein’s program of study.
Finding the Right College
My oldest knew for years what he wanted to study and found the perfect program for him and applied early admission with an outstanding transcript as a National Merit Finalist with perfect SAT scores and was admitted right away, so there was very little trauma or stress involved. His brother has less certainty, but we believe that we have selected four good schools that he would be happy at and do well. One, Columbia engineering program, is our so-called “reach” school that we don’t really expect to get into, but the others I think are good likelihoods: Manhattan College, Providence College, and SUNY Stony Brook. He hopes to study engineering while also being able to participate in musical theater and/or performance. Having extra college credits going into college makes it more likely that he can take courses outside his major while in college. His older brother is currently double-majoring because of his extra credits.
If anyone has read this whole tome and has any questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
Published in General
Grove City College in western PA is supposed to be a lot like Hillsdale. I had two nephews graduate from there, both of whom now have PhD’s. They went there for the same reason, much closer to their family/home in MD.
Now some memories are coming back into my old mind; in my day both Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Lehigh University were considered outstanding schools with an emphasis on engineering. I suppose in the modern world you have to evaluate all schools by how deeply they have bitten into the diversity/politically correctness/no-content apple.
When I read posts like this it makes me even more excited to homeschool my children! I was homeschooled myself, K-12 . . . my parents didn’t care to send us to public school and we couldn’t afford a good private school. I always tell people that I got an excellent education and strong family bonds out of the deal, with a small side of social awkwardness. I grew out of the social awkwardness, but nobody can take the first two away from me!
Echoing the recommendation for Grove City– one of my brothers went there as an engineering major. They don’t take government funding, and while they aren’t quite as classically bent as Hillsdale (my alma mater) you won’t find any post-modern nonsense in their course catalog. He had a great experience, graduated the top of his class, and proceeded to earn his master’s at Penn State within 18 months. Showoff.
RPI is my eldest’s school.
Wow! Exactly what She said!! ^ Good job Mama!
Lehigh is also an excellent engineering school in your commuting radius – Lee Iaccoa went there, for example.
My son had an excellent education at NC State for engineering – several Nobel Prize winners are on the faculty or have taught there. I know it’s outside the geographic range you set but there are so many businesses sponsoring scholarships that he may have enough cash for a few flights home. My son had his entire education paid for a chemical engineering major by a paper industry trade association.
Best of luck to you and yours in any event, I’m sure they will do great.
RPI is Ray Kujawa’s school.
Go Engineers!
Relating to the main topic, when our son started actively looking into colleges, I had a chance to talk with the registrar of a local university. He said that they were very interested in admitting homeschoolers. He said that homeschoolers are looked at on an individual basis, considering whatever records, etc. are available. Our son was accepted by every college where he applied. In the final analysis he ended up in something of a bidding war between two of his top choices.
California laws are much less demanding than New York’s. Still, my wife produced regular transcripts, and kept records of courses of study, and samples of our kids’ work. That our son had started taking some college classes, while still in high school, certainly helped. So did the fact that he was an Eagle Scout, and already playing in a college orchestra. I don’t remember letters of recommendation required for admission, but they did come into play for some scholarships.
In the end, we learned that colleges are eager to accept homeschoolers because they’re consistently so well – prepared. If this is something holding you back from homeschooling, set your worries aside. It’s all good.
Great Post! Thanks Mama Toad.
Good for you, Mama Toad!
I would just add that the “sticker price” for colleges bears little resemblance to the actual price, especially if the family is not wealthy. An Ivy League education for one of my kids would be cheaper than the State University in our state, for example. Good luck with Columbia!
We have not homeschooled high school – just K-8 so far. kidcoder got a free ride with extra $$ at UTD, thanks to his PSAT scores (those scores and the final essay is worth almost a quarter-mil to us). And #2 is in McGill where, thanks to my parents’ decision to attend a Canadian hospital for my birth decades ago, he is attending for the princely sum of $3k USD/year.
My wife and I did the math. 2032 is the last year we’ll be doing college admissions with a kid. And we may yet keep one or more at home for high school; we’ll see how it goes. If we do, I’ll be in touch with the Toads!
I should have mentioned that when I collect aquatic invertebrates for these children’s programs, before the kids see them I usually toss out any frogs and tadpoles that may have found their way into my nets. They’re too big and charismatic, such that if I leave them in, we never get around to learning about the mayfly and dragonfly nymphs, cladocera, copepods, predacious diving beetle larvae, etc. etc etc., much less the microscopic inverts.
But there is a one-day program run by a nature center that I still help out with around Labor Day, and the organizers and other volunteers usually want me to just leave them in. So I do it. It’s their program, and the kids do enjoy them.
Ha! When my eldest was just a toddler, he participated in the University of Oregon’s neuropsychological testing. I have a great picture of him at about 18 months wearing a shower cap with electrodes all over it and sitting on my lap. They used to give out free books, which was one reason I participated (my husband was a grad student and we were poor!). That’s how my sons first got hooked on Thomas the Tank Engine stories… My second son’s first word was “Thomas.” How we all loved the Ringo Starr narrated tv show…
We home schooled our son for a little over four years. I wish we could have done it all the way through but it didn’t work out that way. I do think the kids have to have a certain level of innate compliance and the ability to be self-directed. Our son has some issues, and it was tremendously difficult when, as an only child, his friends and activities were all a 40-minute car ride away. We found a wonderful private school very close to home that also understood homeschoolers. It was a tremendously difficult transition, but after about two years he is getting the hang of it.
The aviability of homeschoolers to take community college courses is such a perk.
Good thing I went to a public school. Probably would have flunked out of Toad Hall.
None of my students need fail because they are the purpose of the class. The class exists for them to learn.
They might need to rewrite the paper, but never fail.
Never doubt my potential to surprise, amaze, and fail.
And here’s the great divide – well, at least one of them – between home schools and the rest: Public schools’, and even most private schools’ curricula, testing, etc. are aimed primarily at getting a certain grade and/or test score. A homeschool teacher’s first and only aim is that the student learn the material. There’s a chasm too wide to cross between, “I got an A,” and “I know the subject.” That’s why most homeschoolers make such great college students.
Talking with Papa Toad, I’ve come up with a couple of more comments.
My college prep coursework might be a little intimidating to someone thinking of homeschooling but not sure of her abilities to teach, but it should not be.
It is not necessary to teach all high school courses yourself in order to homeschool through high school. Many of my friends and acquaintances are very reluctant or scared to teach math and science at the high school level. I am a bit unusual — in no way am I a math or science expert, but I’ve studied college calculus, chemistry, and physics and am not intimidated by the high school course work.
There are many resources, from co-ops to private tutors, but let me underscore again that community college is an incredible resource for high schooling outside the educrat bureaucracy monopoly — my sophomore’s best friend is doing most of her coursework at the community college other than my chemistry course, from English to algebra to music theory.
Frankly, I have never understood the homeschooling movement.
Of course, in the largely rural MT school is not just about learning it is about community. While I went to a middling sized high school in a large town, there are high schools in MT that basically force every boy to play football just so the school can field and 8 man team. In addition, the next nearest high school is 40 miles away. In these situations, the concept of homeschooling is pretty foreign and completely isolating from ones community. What works in the densely populated eastern US and the sparsely populated interior west are very different. This is why education policy should be left in the hands of the States rather than the Federal government. Here in MT the concept of “charter schools” and “school choice” is just unimportant.
Despite being one of those super-duper smartypants types, who held most of my high school science teachers in disdain for their superficial understanding and passion for science, homeschooling would not have worked for me as I needed the socializing aspects of school and neither of my parents were particularly social.
In any case, I am glad to see that your children are doing so well, and I can tell they are getting a first class education that I would have envied.
When our kids were young, we lived in a more rural area (though my wife and I both grew up in the suburbs). One of the reasons we decided to move back to the Pittsburgh area was because we were planning to homeschool and there would be more families and opportunities (both educational and social) than in a more rural area. We have homeschooled all the way through (our oldest is a junior at Carnegie Mellon University and our youngest is a junior in high school). We have also made extensive use of community college during high school and have been very pleased with it. My wife and I will actually be doing a talk at a homeschool conference on being your student’s guidance counselor. I will be going back through this thread and taking notes.
Also, our youngest is looking to major in Mechanical Engineering. My wife and I both graduated from Grove City College. They do have good programs in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, but those are the only types of engineering that they offer. Our youngest is leaning toward Pitt because he wants to commute. We are also planning to visit Rochester Institute of Technology and Penn State Behrend (branch campus in Erie that specializes in engineering).
Ribbit Mama Toad,
How I admire and envy you! Bravo on your work and your tadpoles.
Although a physician by day, I have been working on a non-medical project with a couple of the engineering faculty at Manhattan College for three years now. They are good people and love their work. It is a fine school for getting a good, practical education. If your tadpole wants to work as an engineer, I recommend MC. If he wants to be a professor of engineering, your “reach” to Columbia seems reasonable.
Good luck.
My school district just announced that they will no longer be commemorating “Columbus” Day but rather “Indigenous Peoples” Day. They also have a working relationship with Planned Parenthood to create “peer educators” in the schools.
Does this help make it easier to understand?
Thanks, Doc! Go Jaspers! (My dad was a Jasper class of ’56, my brother ’88.)
That is a fantastic story…we were big fans of the Ringo narrated versions also! And, just for the record, my testing is electrode free…
(Groan) Socialization. It always comes up, and always as such a disadvantage of homeschooling. @Z in MT hit the nail on the head. Socialization is near the top of reasons to DO homeschooling. Our first personal exposure to homeschooling occurred with a CHP officer, albeit in a rural area. His two sons had to go to school and deal with classmates, the parents of whom their dad had arrested the night before. Not good.
With homeschooling you gain control of the sorts of socialization you want your children to have. Church youth groups, Scouts, 4H, community orchestras, barbershop choruses, art classes at community centers, the list goes on and on. Many school districts permit homeschoolers to participate in district sports, music, theater and similar activities. Because homeschoolers do really well and add a lot to their programs. That’s quite a surprise to many people. But in the words of my father-in-law, himself a university prof, “Of course they do. They’re not stupid!”
When you get down to it, you’ll find that when public school educators talk about “socialization,” they are often referring to the process of training young people to fall in line with everybody else, and do their part for the good of the whole. That’s right – social-ism.
Just wanted to post an update:
My high school senior has enrolled officially at Manhattan College in the Bronx and plans to study engineering starting in the fall semester.
Glory glory! Only four more students to go…
Wonderful news! Well done!