<p>I was told that homeschoolers MUST have taken (and done well of course!) in spelling bee. Is that really true? I'm not saying "some" or "most". I was told that having spelling bee is a MUST for homeschoolers. The only exception is for instance if someone is already extremely "famous", someone with the accomplishment of say Albert Einstein but during high school, for instance. Is this true?? I find it hard to believe.</p>
<p>Do you know of any homeschoolers admitted to Harvard w/o spelling bee experience?</p>
<p>Did you bother to go to the Harvard website and look at their requirements for homeschoolers? Did you actually call anyone in their admissions department?</p>
<p>Our homeschooled D1 didn’t apply to Harvard but she was accepted ED to her first choice college, a highly selective LAC, and she shopped around at a lot of other highly selective schools before settling on her ED choice. I’d say the most consistent message we got from admissions officers at these schools is that they want to be sure homeschoolers have an adequate background in math and science. Many homeschoolers can demonstrate the kind of “passion” and extraordinary achievements in one or more areas that make them interesting to adcoms, but a significant fraction of them are deficient in math/science; in many cases that’s what separates the most competitive homeschooling candidates from the rest. Never heard one word about spelling bees.</p>
<p>Both my kids were homeschooled through middle school. One went to Stanford and another to University of Pennsylvania. All colleges are looking of excellence, passion and talent - homeschooled or not.</p>
<p>No college or university would require participation in a spelling bee as a requirement for admission, it is not a college level activity. Furthermore, since nearly all word processing software now has spell check even people like me who are terrible spellers can write a paper or report that is free of spelling mistakes.</p>
<p>It does not surprise me that home schooled children are most deficient in math and science. I am a physician with an MD who received an undergraduate degree in Astrophysics and I am not confident that I could teach an AP science course. Many parents who home school are not that well educated themselves and are unable to teach these subjects due to lack of knowledge and when they do try to teach science many actually teach pseudoscience like creationism and intelligent design.</p>
<p>Well, yes, there are those. But then there are those who homeschool their kids precisely because their local public schools don’t offer a sufficiently rigorous curriculum, including math/science. I know one homeschooler here in Minnesota who as a HS junior is taking advanced graduate-level math classes at our local public flagship. His parents pulled him out of the public schools because he was so far ahead of anything the public schools could offer in math that he was dying of boredom and intellectually wasting away. The math department at the U placed him into graduate level courses because he’d already burned through the undergrad math curriculum through self-study as a homeschooler. </p>
<p>There are many ways to homeschool; they don’t all involve the parents doing all the teaching. For subjects the parents are ill-prepared to reach, some homeschooling families hire tutors, some organize cooperatives that pool the expertise of parents and/or hire qualified professionals, some employ on-line “distance-learning” classes (including some offered by leading universities), some take certain classes (often, but not exclusively, math & lab sciences) “a la carte” from local high schools, community colleges, or as here in Minnesota 4-year colleges and universities under a program in which the state pays for qualifying HS juniors and seniors to take college classes. </p>
<p>Bottom line, while some homeschoolers don’t get rigorous math and science, other homeschoolers are among the very best-prepared for college in these subjects. So I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “home schooled children are most deficient in math and science.” Some are, some aren’t; the highly selective colleges are aware of that, and for many demonstrated math/science proficiency is an important admissions criterion for homeschoolers. On the other hand, a tragically large number of kids coming out of the public schools are deficient in these subjects as well; the adcoms are also well aware of that, and it’s an important admissions criterion with this group as well. The only difference is that among conventionally schooled kids it only takes a quick glance at math/science grades and SAT Math test scores to weed out the deficient. For homeschoolers it may be a bit more complicated to make that assessment, depending on what kinds of evidence they bring to the table.</p>
<p>Well said bclintonk and also said more nicely than I would have said it. My impression was that perhaps Lemaitre1 only wanted to stir up controversy with such an ill-informed statement. </p>
<p>I would be very interested to hear how the OP heard this idea that homeschooled kids must have spelling bee experience in order to be accepted at Harvard. It is such an outrageous statement that I wondered if he really was serious.</p>
<p>I wonder how impressed Harvard and other top schools would be with spelling bee achievements in the first place, since it is primarily rote memorization.</p>
<p>and of course Evan O’Dorney
National spelling bee 2007, homeschooler, Harvard</p>
<p>A parent told me two other homeschoolers in Harvard who participated in spelling bee but no links since they probably did not win the top 3 places nationally.</p>
<p>Why do you want to know? Are you trying to make somebody participate in spelling bees? Or are you trying to persuade somebody to let you participate in spelling bees?</p>
<p>I can assure you that Harvard is not particularly interested in spelling bee performance.</p>
<p>It is great that you are homeschooling - we also homeschooled and our daugther was accepted into an IVY League school so it is entirely possible.
Remember you are your child’s Principal, Teacher and Guidance Counselor so make it your business to become informed. Tons of good literature out there as well as websites such as HSLDA. </p>
<p>Be mindful of not creating anxiety for your child due to lack of reliable information. If said child senses your lack of confidence in her education, then getting accepted into a Community College will be a challenge. </p>
<p>There is not one college under the sun that will view spelling bees as a deal breaker.</p>
<p>But not taking AP coursework or CLEP exams or scoring in the top percentile on standarized tests will raise red flags. If your child has Tier 1 type of colleges in mind, make absolute certain she has met basic requirements and then some.</p>
<p>Alison Miller, gold medal, International Math Olympiad</p>
<p>the fabulous Evan O’Dorney, Intel Science first place, IMO second in world</p>
<p>Those two highly qualified homeschoolers didn’t get into Harvard just because they can spell. I know of two other homeschoolers now at Harvard, neither of them spelling champs. Homeschoolers are admitted to Harvard the same way other applicants are, by being outstanding.</p>