My 11th grader has some Bs. I average the grades he receives on daily lessons and tests, and assign grades based on a standard grading scale.
In non science/math courses, grades can be more subjective, but even in those courses, my son has a couple of Bs.
I could easily see my 13 yo getting straight As in high school, though. She wants high grades, will go above and beyond to get them, and in classroom settings, she is always a leader in the class.
I have no doubt she’ll have high test scores, AP scores, DE grades, etc. to back up whatever she does at home.
Grades can be very subjective, though, even in school settings. Isn’t that why colleges likento see standardized test scores, AP scores, SAT subject tests, etc.?
@doschicos It really varies. There is no one grading scheme or standard. Some people feel homeschoolers shouldn’t give grades at all, while others are extremely rigorous and formal. I was somewhere in the middle, maybe a little to the easy grader side.
I tended to use an informal grading scale (from homeschool author Lee Binz) for most grading
A - meets my high expectations
B - pretty good job
C - disappointed, but moving on (to the next unit in the class or from Spanish 1 to Spanish 2)
D - disappointed, and did not achieve enough to move on to the next class in the subject
F - not worthy of high school credit
My kids got mostly As and some Bs.
Some homeschool curriculum is sold with tests and rubrics for grading. I wasn’t very big on tests other than in science. I would say overall, my kids were expected to do more quality and less quantity than a typical high school student. I didn’t designate classes as honors or weight grades.
I’m impressed by what homeschooling can accomplish. The best of these kids are stretching with depth and breadth. And their ECs rightly round the picture. This goes beyond Mom following the local hs curric. I think rather than talk Mastery, it’s about Learning.
And it’s the sort of Learning that can reflect empowerment, which is a far better predictor of college and life success, whatever the eventual path.
Not all HSch kids, there are many reasons families choose. But to reduce this to transcript as a measure (or even Mastery, which is the same concept, ) misses the rest.
…
I don’t think this gal got in bc of a transcript full of A grades. Nor do I think, at this point, that forged grand ECs alone iced her cake. My guess is it starts with the back story she created that made the college want to pull for her.
I’d like to know where this comes from:
“The better the university, the more willing they are to accept standardized tests plus letters and an impressive EC, and not to require any transcript at all.” Say what?
@lookingforward I think the response to what you quoted, “The better the university, the more willing they are to accept standardized tests plus letters and an impressive EC, and not to require any transcript at all,” is that it is saying that your lower ranked public university doesn’t want course descriptions, LOR, counselor letters, school profiles, EC info, resumes, etc… just transcripts and test scores. The higher ranked schools (and some lower ranked schools) expect more information and want a fuller picture than your avg directional university.
That is a fair assessment. If my student wants to attend the local CC or the typical directional university, a homeschool transcript and test scores are all that are normally wanted. Higher ranked schools expect numerous components, including multiple subject tests, APs, DE grades, etc, to create the full picture. However, I have NEVER seen a school that didn’t want a transcript. I think the quote is over exaggerating. I think the implication is that the transcript is not accepted without the larger picture being completed.
What makes you think homeschoolers aren’t teaching to a rigorous standard? Not all are. But not all kids in a B&M schools are on a rigorous college prep track either.
Yes - homeschool kids can and do get B’s and C’s in many cases. My kid also has grades from outside online classes and classroom classes available locally. Competitive homeschooled applicants package their transcript with ACT/SAT and then some subset of SAT2, CLEP, dual enroll, AP, and possibly other outside providers as proof of concept. My kid will have probably 8-12 dual enroll classes on his transcript when he is done. If your ACT is a 22 and your mommy has given you all A+'s in college level/AP classes and you have no outside classes, colleges can see right through that. Competitive colleges will not just accept mommy grades and they will not get into competitive programs. Many say right on the website that there are extra hoops for homeschoolers to jump through. There is definitely much more weight on the outside information for homeschoolers. I really don’t think you have to worry about students with just high mommy grades taking spots at competitive colleges.
What I wonder about this particular case is this student’s references? Like if she just used extracurricular references that didn’t mention schooling and the school didn’t follow up maybe they could have caught this kid sooner with a simple confirmation from a reference? It is awful if the parents really had references on board ready to commit fraud. But I can see like a music teacher or a theater director or a leader of volunteers might write a glowing reference about a kid without ever mentioning the kid’s actual educational experience. I also suspect she had some ACT scores (or something) to package with her fake transcript to get this far.
@doschicos I am no expert on homeschooling but did it through high school for my two sons (who are both now attending and flourishing at Top 25 LACs) so thought I would contribute to the chorus of homeschooling parents who are trying to do things the right way and not game the system (which only hurts their own kids, eventually).
My kids got mostly As with some Bs. We used the quizzes, tests, and rubrics for any course that included them, and used the same 10-pt grading scale used by the local public school system. We took external courses from many sources (enrichment, online, dual enrollment, etc) and recorded grades as received in those classes. Where an objective grade was not possible (music, athletics, forensics), we used a P/F system even if performance was exceptional (national rankings in several pursuits). I did not weight the final GPAs, nor did I assign more than a high-school level credit to any college course except for lab science. We took standardized achievement tests through 11th grade, and overall mastery in core subjects was evidenced by 6 AP exams and 4 SAT2 tests. My sons’ college applications included a 25-page synopsis of educational philosophy, learning objectives, course descriptions, texts studied, and work samples.
As @AroundHere states above, the educational approach and grading systems vary greatly among homeschoolers – as they do in best vs worst public schools. I agree with @Mom2aphysicsgeek that this is not simply a ficticious transcript, but rather an entire falsified narrative and supporting context. Very sad…
Testing is also less effective at assessing learning and skills related to processes that take more time than the test duration, such as writing and revising a research paper.
What “better” university in the US does not require any transcript at all in the general case, and does not disadvantage traditional high school applicants who take this application route?
With competitive schools, every component is important, not just the transcript (which is how I interpreted the wording…but that may not be what the OP of that comment meant.) I read it that way bc there is no way the issue is only transcript “deep.”
Grading in a homeschool environment might be as diverse as as many families are out there.
FWIW, I’ve known homeschool parents who graded unfairly in the direction of grade deflation.
To me the hardest part about homeschooling high school was making decisions about grades when there was any subjectivity involved in my part.
I have a free private school option now, so I probably won’t homeschool high school again. I found it very stressful.
I think colleges don’t have problems accepting homeschool applicants when they’ve had good experiences with them in the past, which generally seems to be the case.
@doschicos, Grading is pretty simple. If a quiz has 10 questions on it and a student misses 3, that’s a 70. But, again, this issue doesn’t have anything to do with homeschooling.
But is 70 a C- (typical US high school grading scale), or could it be a different grade based on the difficulty of the questions (as is common in college)?
"@doschicos, Grading is pretty simple. If a quiz has 10 questions on it and a student misses 3, that’s a 70. "
Let’s hope a good portion of homeschooling - or any high school based curriculum for that matter - isn’t based on 10 question quizzes. That’s not good preparation for colleges and if I was a college Adcom, I’d sure want to know if that was all the student had exposure to. Let’s hope for the students sake, it really isn’t that simple.
@doschicos, I didn’t say that the bulk of honeschoolers work consists of 10 question quizzes. I said our grading isn’t any different than yours. Why wouldn’t homeschoolers get Bs and Cs? I’m interested in how you think that works. No child is perfect. Some assignments are graded on a straight percent right vs percent wrong scale. Many books come with grading rubrics, so more complex assignments are graded just like your kids would be. @ucbalumnus had an excellent question about weighting. We didn’t and explained that to colleges in the 35+ page (single spaced, double sided) report we were required to submit with applications. We wanted them to be able to interpret the transcript without having to translate it.
This issue isn’t about homeschooling, though. It’s about how colleges can verify the information in the every application they get. The short answer is that they can’t unless people are willing to pony up an awful lot of money. That’s were random verifications come in.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
At the request of the OP, I have split off the discussion of home schooling and transcripts/grades. My apologies in advance if some posts were incorrectly moved or not, but the original thread was getting way too off topic. In addition, please refrain from rehashing the same point over and over - College Confidential is not a debate society.
I guess we can hope to hear from UR if anything has changed as far as their homeschool policies. I’m a homeschool parent whose older two sons, independently homeschooled, went through the college application process. Eldest graduated from MIT, and middle son was accepted to UR. I make my own transcripts, but also submit outside transcripts (community college, online courses, university, and so on). As well, my boys took the usual litany of tests (SAT, subject tests, AP exams).
I also work as a college consultant. I hope to be able to communicate with UR to find out if there is any cause for concern for independent homeschoolers applying to UR.
Oh, and someone said a 70% is a C-. That’s arbitrary, of course, and totally depends on the school’s grading scale. The community colleges here have 70% as a C (no minuses or pluses).
Rochester is not making any changes currently to our homeschooled student policy. I would keep encouraging interested homeschooled applicants to not only have an interview, but to try and schedule it as early as possible.