Homeschool students' admission rate to Harvard/Princeton/Yale

<p>There is a mother on CC who has one homeschool kid at Dartmouth and another at Princeton. I think her screen name is danas, though I could be mistaken. </p>

<p>Homeschool kids poses harder questions for an admissions officer. How would the kid stack up against other kids? He/she (let’s say he to keep things short) may have gotten good SATs/ACTs/Subjects/APs but is he really a hard worker? Would he be top 5 or top 2% in his HS class? We can tell from a traditional applicant from Lexington, MA based upon his class rank (or GPA if the school doesn’t provide class ranks) how he stacked up. So, the uncertainty is much lower. And, how do we know the kid learned all the things on the transcript? If the parents are giving the grades, who knows what the standards are? That is why the community college courses, etc. are important. They provide external validation. That is also why the standardized tests are very important. Given the greater uncertainty about ability to perform in a standard classroom setting, admissions officers will likely set the bar higher. I think distinguishing oneself through other activities may also be more important. As a consequence, it is not obvious to me that the best course is to mimic a HS curriculum (though the kid probably does need to do math and some of the basics) but I would suspect for the upper tier schools (Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Williams, Amherst, …) that proving he can independently do high level work (with some validation) would be a lot more important than working through some homeschool version of a HS curriculum.</p>

<p>My son did a partially homeschool program in HS, so I can’t give you specific advice based upon experience.</p>

<p>Thanks, shawbridge . You mentioned heavily about homeschooled kids’ academic aspect. So, proving the academic rigor is the biggest concern for homeschooled kids?</p>

<p>I think that they need to get comfortable that this homeschooled kid is comparable academically to the #1 or #2 kid in the class at Lexington, MA high school and not just someone whose mother likes him.</p>

<p>They also have a fear that homeschooled kids are not socially well-adjusted, so it is helpful to find ways to address that (e.g., recommendations, interviews, activities). </p>

<p>Both are solvable problems, but they are real and I think contribute to the likely lower acceptance rate at high-end schools. MIT says that they are quite positive on homeschooled kids and that a number of MIT professors homeschool their kids.</p>

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<p>Fortunately, we do not need to speculate about what HYP want in the way of high school academic preparation, since they post this information on their admissions websites. As I stated before, applicants to these schools generally exceed the typical high school curriculum. To “mimic” the usual high school curriculum is not the point. To leave the typical curriculum in the dust is the idea. If all a homeschooler shows is a typical course of study similar to what is covered at an institutional school, that applicant has a slim chance of admission, just like every other typical student who gets rejected.</p>

<p>Harvard posts this suggested course of study:</p>

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<p>[Harvard</a> College Admissions § Applying: Frequently Asked Questions](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/faq.html#1]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/faq.html#1)</p>

<p>It is not news to anyone that academics are only part of what these schools consider. Extracurriculars are important, too, as well as the personal qualities that emerge from letters of recommendation, essays, community service, etc.</p>

<p>Quill Pen, what I was trying to say (in a mild sort of way) is that the curriculum described in your quote is a floor for a homeschooler, not an aspiration. I think across this vast land of ours, there is many a homeschooler who buys a set of books or a curriculum that at best hits the curriculum described above. Given the uncertainties I discussed, a homeschooler does need to leave that curriculum in the dust in some important ways and show he can do high level work. By high level work, I mean work well above the normal top-of-the-high school class kid, well above the level described in the quote. If one merely looks like a normal top-of-the-high school class kid, they can get a less risky version of the same kid by choosing from the normal pool. If the OP’s kid is using homeschooling to do things that are distinctive and impressive, staying a homeschooler may be better but if he is just mimicking HS [and if the objective of HYP outweighs the benefits of a homeschooled education], he is probably better off in HS.</p>

<p>Dear Moderator, please remove ajoin2010’s Ads. Thank you.</p>

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Many thanks to you Quill Pen and shawbridge . It’s very interesting point.</p>

<p>I come down on the side of doing interesting things one couldn’t do if one were to go to school, which may not be a side at all, since we all seem to agree on that.
I followed the admissions percentage at Amherst College, which for several years was higher for home schooled kids than for other applicants. The year 'Rentof2’s son was admitted was lower. Congratulations on that! Most schools make it hard to track the home schooled admissions rate. The year my daughter enrolled at Princeton (2007), the enrolled number of home schoolers was expressed as 2% of the class. That would have meant about 24 students. Princeton’s bad. This was a residual number, an accretion of rounding errors. The actual number was four. I found this out through a newspaper reporter who was doing an article on “unschooling” and talked to the Princeton admissions office, as well as a chance encounter with a relative the Dean of Admissions had in which she said “I remember her (my daughter). She was one of only 4 home schoolers we enrolled that year”.
Having gone through admissions years with two kids so far, my general impression is that among the Ivy schools, Yale is the most conservative, and almost hostile, in its approach to home schoolers. Neither of my kids applied to Yale, so my take is impressionistic and the result of an accumulation of quotes from admissions staff and visceral impressions. Very possibly it is unfair.
Neither one of my kids had any grades or courses at home or at any schools. My son enrolled and graduated from Dartmouth. I don’t know what the admissions percentage there was. I do know that he met quite a few home schoolers purely by chance, enough to make me think the number per year was substantially more than 4. Upper New England has a large home schooling presence, and I’m guessing that assumptions and biases about home schoolers are weaker there. The admissions officer who interviewed him talked about her daughter being taken care of by her grandmother while she had to work, and said she had to deal with people saying “what about socialization?”. She told them that her daughter was socializing with her grandmother. My son also met with a professor who was interested in home schooling her kids and wanted to find out more about my son’s experiences. For what it is worth, my son was admitted to Amherst and Williams as well.
I think that approached properly, home schooling is a very large advantage in applying to elite schools. I’m guessing that home schoolers with elite college aspirations may make one of two errors. The first is to try to duplicate what kids do in school, supplemented with a few junior college courses. Why home school at all? The second, for those inclined to free-wheeling education, is to devalue the worth and importance of standardized tests. Big mistake. Free wheel, certainly- most parents were shocked at what my kids did (and especially, didn’t do) day by day and month by month. But they had the test scores to knock the socks off of kids from Exeter, etc.
I don’t have first hand experience with this, as my kids were readers and humanities oriented, but I have a strong impression that the MITs and CalTechs understand exhausting high school math and science offerings by the time one is 13 or 14 and trying to come up with challenges outside school.
If my kids were here at 1 AM, I’m sure they would say they wouldn’t have had the admissions results they had if they didn’t home school, and that they would hope to home school their own children someday.</p>

<p>Just to add to the last post, my kids had no academic recommendations at all, in the traditional sense.
My son’s recs were from the local head librarian (a home schooler) and an interesting neighbor, whom he met for lunch regularly.
My daughter’s were from two ballet teachers.</p>

<p>Thank you very much for your input, danas.</p>

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Hmm, that’s not a good news for us to hear, as my son likes Yale very much. Do you see any possible explanation why Yale is less kinder to homeschool kids?</p>

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<p>^ That was also my parents’ impression after talking to admissions officers from HYP. </p>

<p>For what it’s worth, I was initially waitlisted at Harvard and Princeton, and rejected at Yale. (I was able to interview for Harvard and Princeton, but Yale didn’t offer me an interview).</p>

<p>I always assumed that the majority of the schools I was applying to hadn’t fully embraced (for lack of better word) homeschooled applicants. Format-wise, I tried to make my application the same as those of normal high-school applicants, while emphasizing in my recommendations and essays my unique academic and extracurricular accomplishments (many only possible because I was homeschooled). </p>

<p>Interestingly, the two most selective schools that admitted me, Pomona and Columbia, required homeschooled applicants to submit the results of FOUR SAT Subject Tests (not exactly the most homeschool-friendly admissions requirement), and may partially explain why I am the only homeschooled student in my class here at Pomona.</p>

<p>Thank you for sharing your own HYP admission experience, lolcats4. In fact I saw your stats in 2013 Harvard forum, and I have then wondered why you didn’t get an admission to Harvard. I thought you were well qualified homeschooler last year. Any thought?</p>

<p>Hi, I’m a freshman at Princeton this year. I was homeschooled all through high school. There were 11 homeschoolers accepted into the freshmen class (class of 2013).</p>

<p>ALSO: I got rejected from Harvard/Yale. Princeton is by far the most friendly of the three toward homeschoolers.
MIT is extremely friendly towards homeschoolers - I saw at least 20 or so when I was browsing forums for the accepted class of 2013.</p>

<p>The biggest piece of advice for homeschooled students can be described in two words:
Standardized tests.
Buy review books, nail 5’s on a bunch of AP tests, get good grades on the SAT.
If you do, you’ll get in.
If you don’t, you won’t.
It’s that simple.</p>

<p>Whoee! It helps a lot! Harvard long has had a reputation as welcoming to home schoolers. I’m happy to hear that Princeton is stepping it up! Maybe passing Harvard by! Welcome to the 21st Century.
Maybe some day high school affiliation will be regarded as an embarrassing crutch to anybody with a mind.</p>

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<p>I think I agree with this.</p>

<p>Physicsgrl, Congratulations for your getting admission from Princeton last year. I am revisiting your three quotes here.

I am hearing that there are 4 homeschooled freshman currently in Princeton. So, do you mean other remain 7 accepted homeschoolers didn’t choose Princeton? It’s hard for me to think that most admitted homeschooled kids to Princeton elected not to attend the school. Where is this info coming from?

I went the thread to see what stats homeschoolers had for MIT. I only saw just two applicants in MIT class 2013 thread as a homeschooler last year, not 20 something. One was rejected in EA, another was deferred in EA but accepted in RD in the end. So I am not quite following your quote.

Do you mean HYP have been able to find only 0 to 8 homeschoolers with excellent standardized tests? I am afraid that it’s not that simple, and that why I am here to see how tricky it is to be accepted to those schools as a homeschooler.</p>

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<p>I agree. Obviously an oversimplification because the top-x schools have more qualified applicants than they have a place for, but getting the top scores proves that you are on-the-level so they can assess your unique learning as a homeschooler. Without the top scores, or community college grades, or international awards, you can certainly get in. But with outside validation, the school can easily see that you are good enough and can focus on finding out that your unique experiences make you someone they need.</p>

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<p>No, it means HYP has only been able to find/enroll 0-8 homeschoolers with excellent standardized test scores as well as a host of other redeeming qualities necessary for admission.</p>

<p>Some evidence that standardized test scores are the currency of the realm.
With my daughter applying ED to Princeton, I had six weeks to kill. I had heard about Naviance, a program for high school students that measured the results of previous applicants’ GPAs and SATs with historic admissions results at particular colleges.
I decided to create my own admissions matrix using SAT scores and (3) composite Subject Test Scores (required at the time by Princeton) and admissions results from the previous year’s admissions to Princeton. My home schoolers had no GPAs, and I figured that for practical purposes, home schoolers had no such thing.
My data source was the previous year’s self-reported results on the College Confidential admissions thread. This was superior to Naviance data in a very important way. I screened out URMs, recruited athletes, and legacy applicants.
There were about 100 reporting applicants after the screen.
Of applicants with 2350 or more on each dimension, a large majority were admitted. I could dig up the exact numbers if I searched a bit. The only applicants with less than 2300 on the SAT (and unhooked) that were admitted had submitted arts portfolios of some kind, with maybe one or two exceptions. There were several people with 2400 composites on the SAT Subject tests who weren’t admitted. My guess is that these were science and math oriented students, because the scores on these tests trend higher.
Happily, my daughter had 2350 or more on both dimensions and was admitted.
The “King has no clothes” element to this that was striking was that admissions results could be well predicted with NO knowledge of the high school record whatsoever. Just not a factor.</p>