<p>I'd love to hear any comments regarding the Common App's homeschool letter. How long is the average letter? What did you cover? Did you also do the counselor letter, and, if so, how did you treat them differently? I'm wondering if the letter on the reason for hs-ing/philosphy, etc., should be brilliant, since we, the writers, are also the educators, and a lot will be "read" into it? Thanks for all help!</p>
<p>Hi ScarletSeer,</p>
<p>My oldest applied to colleges two years ago. I wrote a 3 page counselor letter but I have seen them shorter and longer. I also had a document where I merged all of the following: school profile, homeschool philosophy, curriculum, grading scale, and standardized testing. I submitted that on the Common App. in lieu of doing separate documents.</p>
<p>In the counselor letter, I basically recommended my son and talked about his attributes, academic strengths, personal strengths, and added some anecdotal info from some of his college profs and sports coaches, etc.</p>
<p>The other document is sort of self-explanatory. For the school profile portion, I commented on our neighborhood and local high school as a way of comparison to my son.</p>
<p>Should it be brilliant? If you can write brilliantly, why not? :-)</p>
<p>I had about a page on why and how we homeschooled, including the reason we started and our “philosophy”, which was mostly “give the gifted kid the intellectual stimulation he needs”. I wrote a two-page counselor letter where I said why and how geekson is so awesome, mostly with a few anecdotes that exemplified some of his wonderful traits. I also snuck in a quick bit about a physical disability and how his successes in spite of it just showed even more how cool he is.</p>