Thoughts on College Transcripts for Homeschoolers

I have a daughter who is in college and majoring in Chemical Engineering and my other daughter is graduating next month from our homeschool. Both have been accepted into Honors programs at their colleges. In fact, my oldest was pursued aggressively by many colleges and was awarded an ROTC scholarship which she ended up turning down. I am not saying this to boast but, instead, am just qualifying myself before I put my '2-cents' in....LOL

The one thing that I discovered in the college application process is that universities no longer 'raise an eyebrow' to homeschoolers' transcripts. Homeschooled children have an excellent reputation in the college arena. We have sent both of our daughters to the local university (University of Colorado) their senior year of high school as a transition to college. Because we decided at the last minute to try and get our daughter into summer school (the summer before her senior year of high school) I threw together a transcript......taking courses from junior high.......putting down co-op courses..........satellite courses.........anything and everything on the transcript. I had put little numbers next to these courses with the intention of explaining the types of courses at the bottom of the transcript. In my haste, I hit enter one too many times and did not realize that the 'explanations' shifted down to the next page. The university accepted my daughter immediately but I received a telephone call from their Office of Admissions...........I was TERRIFIED to return the call. When I did so, I spoke to the Head of Admissions and he just wanted to find out what the footnote numbers were about. He JUST wanted to clarify that they were not transfer credits from the community college. We ended up having a long chat and he told me that they really are not concerned what a homeschooler puts on a transcript....they look only at the SAT/ACT scores and they also look to see if the student has taken college prep courses. He told me that the homeschoolers blow them away and he wished he knew what homeschoolers were teaching their kids! They did not care that my daughter was 16.

My oldest daughter has had so many similar conversations with professors who have told her that their top students are homeschooled. So......my two cents......don't sweat the transcript! A classical education will prepare them for college. We have found that the university courses (especially English) are EASY compared with what we, as homeschool parents, make them do at home.

contributed by Rebecca from Colorado