<p>Can any of you pros at homeschooling explain what you used for the Guidance Counselor report for the college applications? Thank you!
Susan</p>
<p>Check with the admissions office for the college in which your child is interested. Some told me to write the guidance counselor recommendation (backed up, of course, by the other required recommendations from teachers), while others wanted an independant person to do it.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for that input, Ellen. Actually this is not on behalf of my own children. My kids are freshman and sophmores in college and were not home schooled. I am advising a homeschooler with her process and wasn't sure about the guidance counselor report. I realize that many schools want someone other than the parent to write the academic recs and am working on that. I just wasn't sure who writes the guidance counselor one. </p>
<p>I also plan on checking with each school as to any special requirements for the application process for homeschoolers. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>I wrote the guidance counselor reports for both of my sons. It was accepted by the colleges to which they applied without any problems. Along with filling out that part of the application, I wrote a cover letter of about two pages briefly explaining why we homeschooled, the general methods we used and our philosophy of education, and how homeschooling helped my sons achieve their particular goals. We also had course descriptions for all the courses studied at home.</p>
<p>Susan, I thought your daughters were already in college. I was wondering if the empty nest had become too silent and perhaps you'd decided to adopt another. <g> BTW, how is everything going for them? Ski season should be coming up soon! Is your other daughter completely healed from her accident?</g></p>
<p>I highly recommend that homeschoolers contact the individual admissions offices, not only about guidance officer recommendations, but also about the entire school portion of the application. (The student part of the application is much the same whether the student is homeschooled or attends a traditional school.) Each college seems to have its own preference about how homeschool applications should be filed. Although colleges probably would accept other formats, I've decided to make it easy by tailoring each school part of the admissions to whatever the admissions office requested. </p>
<p>I also recommend asking to talk to the head of admissions, if that person is available. Otherwise, the conversation often goes something like this:</p>
<p>Me: Question
Person on the other end: Wait a minute. I have to ask my boss.
(Long wait.)
Person on the other end: Answer
Me: Question
Person on the other end: Wait a minute. I have to ask my boss.
Etc.</p>
<p>Thank you Susan and Ellen for your thoughts/advice. </p>
<p>No matter what, I am having the home schooler I am advising contact each admissions office to find out if they have any special additional application requirements for homeschoolers, any additional essays or documentation, etc. I have seen a few schools' admissions websites note these but many do not so I want to make sure we are clear on each school. No matter what is required, I was planning on the student including a statement explaining why she did homeschooling, how she went about it and what she gained from this experience. I see that kind of "additional statement" as akin to some other kinds of students who would add an additional piece to an application for particular circumstances. For instance, my youngest daughter graduated high school a year early and I had her write a statement articulating her reasons and readiness for college in addition to the regularly required essays and documents. For the guidance counselor report for my advisee, I will have her double check with each college who they want or will accept for that. I know some do not want a parent to do the teacher recs but maybe a parent can do the guidance counselor report? Makes sense. This student actually has a transcript from some place in her state that grants credits/transcripts for homeschoolers.</p>
<p>Thanks, Ellen, for asking about my girls. With regard to ski season....well, in my neck of the woods, it has already snowed twice if you can believe it. Last weekend it snowed three inches. But another day this past week, it snowed six inches at my house and more on the mountains! Quite freaky on top of the foliage. Today my husband climbed the mountain on skis and skied down it a few times. My nineteen year old is loving Brown and is still on the varsity ski team. They won't be skiing until winter break but they have daily dryland training right now. </p>
<p>My daughter who was severely injured in a car wreck last March is fully recovered thankfully and miraculously. Her plans and goals were not altered as far as college and all goes. She did miss out of many things last spring that she cared about, especially performance-wise, but that is not too terrible in the scheme of things. She began walking the day of prom and was fine for graduation and graduated early as planned and only missed one month of school. She was able to be in two musicals this summer and then created and directed a musical for children. She even danced and nobody could believe that. She did Physical Therapy up until college started. She entered the BFA in Musical Theater program (CAP21) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She even placed in the highest dance levels there so her injuries did not impact where she would have been otherwise. However, she is still in pain and I know it affects her but doctors do say it can take a year for the body to fully recover there. She feels she is not the same but appears to be able to do whatever she did before from what I can tell. She has to do a TON of walking in NYC and then dances a lot and says she is even working out in a gym. At least it does not seem to have impacted her moving forward with her training and career aspirations. She is one lucky kid though I don't wish her ordeal on anyone. She has a chance to still do want she dreamed about! She says the experience even comes up in acting class and I am sure it affected her emotionally. So, I don't have to be nervous about her driving now as she is in NYC but I have new things to be nervous about my little pipsqueak making her way in the big city and being from a dirt road in the country. Tomorrow, she is taking a subway for the first time all alone to a theater internship. It is always something for a mom to have something to worry about. I am brave on the driving though because I let my 18 1/2 year old this past summer drive 6000 miles to Alaska, after the ordeal I had been through with the younger one! She, however, is a mucho responsible kid. I guess they are growing up. I'm happy for them being happy at their colleges doing what they hoped for and worked hard for but it is also sad not having them in our daily lives (in person). </p>
<p>Susan
PS, I did not think of this until this post but tomorrow my younger D is performing in a musical revue at a children's hospital as an arts service initiative which is one thing she does as a Tisch Scholar and I just realized that it was not too long ago that she was in the Pediatrics wing of the hospital for ten days and so now she is on the "other side".</p>
<p>soozievt, it's always a good idea to find out what requirements the specific school has for homeschoolers. We contacted my daughter's school very early in the process. However, I don't think we ever asked that question. We just assumed the guidance and school description portions should be filled out by a parent. </p>
<p>I wrote them both, with input from my husband and daughter. We used the school description to tell about our reasons for, and approach to, homeschooling. For the guidance portion, I said up front that I didn't think they would expect me to be objective, so I was going to tell them straight out what I was most proud of in my daughter, and why I thought the school was a good fit. </p>
<p>Of course we'll never know if what I wrote helped or hindered, but she applied ED to a competitive school and was accepted.</p>
<p>Princeton told me to have my parents fill it out...</p>
<p>I also wrote the guidance counselor form and the "school profile" describing our educational philosophy and educational approach. Then I included one extra outside academic letter beyond the 2 or 3 that each college requested, so that colleges ended up hearing from the same number of people outside the family that they would have if there had been a guidance counselor other than me. I asked a number of adcoms about general advice for homeschooler applicants, but never got so specific as "who writes the guidance counselor report?" I felt like I was the only logical person to put the whole thing in perspective, so I wrote it. Son was accepted everywhere he applied, all ultra-elite colleges.</p>