<p>I suppose this is a document with which we should become familiar. Do any of you have experience filling it out? What do you think of the questions on it? Does the Homeschool Supplement give you enough space to say what you want to say about your homeschooling program?</p>
<p>I'd appreciate any advice you have about Homeschool Supplement to the Common Application.</p>
<p>I'm wondering about the common ap too. I've looked it over. What I'm thinking is that I'll use it (fill out online but print it out and mail it in with a resume attached in addition to the forms they require.) </p>
<p>We will also have our own transcript which will look just like other transcripts from public schools. I don't like the homeschool form because it doesn't leave enough room, but I think it is used to make sure that you have listed the required courses that the colleges require for admission (4 units English, 3 math, 2 foreign language, etc...)</p>
<p>My problem with the Supplement is the assumption that home school students do (or should do) what all other students do, just in a different setting.
For some families this is true, but for others, including the people in my family, it just isn't like that at all. We would hate to do "school at home". That would be escaping from freedom. I have no interest in becoming my own children's taskmaster (or jailer), or even in sub-contracting out the taskmaster job to others on occasion.
The Supplement's transcript section asks for a list of course titles, dates, grades and level of courses. In our family their are no courses, we don't keep track of dates (and my kids have listed none in their applications), grades were never given and level of course doesn't apply because the term course doesn't apply.
Does the supplement look like the college applications home schoolers have dealt with in the past? Yes.<br>
The difference is that my kids and I (in doing the School Report) proceeded to work around the categories that didn't apply and explained what actually happened. I assumed that the reader would figure, "Well, these are home schoolers. Of course they do things differently". The format of the Common Application Supplement pretty well demolishes that conceit.
This is just one more reinforcement of the idea that there is only a single legitimate form of education that will pass muster. The saddest result to me would be for home schoolers to feel they can't buck the machine and get away with it and don't, whenever possible, follow their bliss.
My first two home school college applicants were able to do it their way at no cost to their futures. My last home schooler is only 11, but I fully hope and expect that she will be able to as well.</p>
<p>This is just with the common application and only some colleges ask for it even with that. Other colleges have their own home-school transcript form to fill out and still others don't have anything at all.</p>
<p>They submitted a list of readings, sorted by subject in a way that made sense to readers (ie. Physics, World History, etc). This was backed up simply by the standard testing required of all applicants. The recommendations were not by teachers, of which they had none, but by people who knew them intimately for many years.
My son graduated from Dartmouth last year and my daughter will start at Princeton in September.</p>
<p>My son is applying to Caltech, Harvey Mudd, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard and WashingtonU. All but Princeton require the HS suppliment.</p>
<p>Much of what they want is already in the transcript. Everything else was going to be in the counselor letter that wise-hsers-who-have-already-done-this tell me I really need to write. Does this mean I dont need to write the counselor letter? </p>
<p>I am just going to do the suppliment the way they want.</p>
<p>Your counselor letter-school report is the best opportunity to explain what actually took place and to to show off your student to the best advantage, in my opinion.
My daughter was accepted to and will attend Princeton, but Harvard has an even stronger history of being open to home schoolers.
Particularly in the Maths and Sciences, it seems to me, there is a strong argument for home schooling. How many high school Physics teachers are Physicists? Try none.</p>