<p>I have a young friend who is in her junior year of high school and homeschooling because her local public is so awful. How would the fact that she's homeschooled - and has no GPA or class rank - impact her ability to qualify for merit-based aid?</p>
<p>I've already suggested that she look at schools like UA that offer guaranteed merit scholarships for high GPA and test scores . . . but now I'm wondering if she'd be deemed ineligible for those awards because she has no recent GPA. She could possibly go back to school for her senior year if she had to, in order to qualify, but would that be too little, too late?</p>
<p>I have never seen it make any difference at the schools with my friends peers. Test scores are usually the main thing for merit aid, not gpa. A low gpa can knock you out of contention so often being homeschooled can be an advanage, heh, heh. I 've seen that. She needs to call the specific programs if the websites do not cover home schoolers. Some do. I know that the Promise and other such programs will give homeschoolers the grants without a blink. i’ve known winners of the Chancellors Award and NMS be home schoolers.</p>
<p>Homeschooled kids do have GPAs. The parents give the grades. Isn’t this child’s parents assigning grades? If not, they should be.</p>
<p>If you mean Bama for UA (and not Arizona), yes, Bama awards merit to Homeschooled kids but they must have grades. See the website for details.</p>
<p>Parents give grades?? isn’t that like the fox guarding the henhouse?</p>
<p>My son would get A’s, if sleeping in and staying up late counted.
He does his laundry so he would get an A in that too.</p>
<p>My daughter is homeschooled and is graduating this May. She received merit money from every college she was accepted to. You will need to have your parents do a transcript with grades, text books used, course descriptions, etc. You will also want a student resume and perhaps reading list and writing exams. If you are interested in athletics you need to register through the NCAA.
DD was offered a Full ride at one LAC and half or 3/4 to many of her other colleges. You just have to research and plan ahead and look at each colleges website for the specifics of homeschooled students. Good Luck!</p>
<p>Parents give grades?? isn’t that like the fox guarding the henhouse?</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>I do find this amusing during the NMSF to NMF process. A number of NMSFs don’t make it to NMF standing because of grades. I’ve never heard of a homeschooled kid having that issue. ;)</p>
<p>My kids (homeschooled) got merit scholarships based on their SAT scores. GPA was not important.</p>
<p>I actually spoke to someone at UA-Huntsville today, and they really didn’t know what to make of a student who had no GPA . . . they really did want to see grades. So I guess it varies from school to school.</p>
<p>I also spoke to a neighbor of mine whose homeschooled daughter was just admitted to a well known LAC. He told me they’d registered both their kids with an independent “school” that just takes everything they send in and turns it into an official transcript for them. The parents design the curriculum and determine the kids’ grades, and the school - for a modest fee - makes it all look official. Pretty clever, if you ask me . . . wish I’d thought of starting a “school” like that!</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I think there are other agencies or “schools” or whatever you call them that do the same thing. I think some Christian schools do this for homeschoolers. And, there are some Catholic homeschooling groups that provide transcripts. </p>
<p>Yes, it would vary from school to school. I don’t know what UAH does, since I don’t know any homeschoolers there. But, I know that UA has homeschoolers, but I’m guessing that they associate with something that provides a transcript???</p>
<p>If you go to the Bama forum here, there’s a poster there named Cuttlefish and I think she homeschooled her D. You could send her a PM and get more details.</p>
<p>Many homeschoolers use community college courses and university courses as their “high school” and thus, have “outside” transcripts and gpa validation in addition to transcripts from home. Other homeschoolers take online classes, local classes from teachers, co-ops, tutors, etc. and again receive outside validation of work. National Merit requires a gpa but a homeschooled parent can just make one “homeschool” transcript that reflects all courses taken and then have any official transcripts sent, as well. It’s really not a problem for a homeschooler to receive merit aid.</p>
<p>HTH.</p>
<p>I homeschool my 3 children. I give grades and have a transcript. Most I know do as well. In my case, my 9th grader currently has 3 A’s and 3 B’s. The B’s are from me and the A’s are from his dual credit classes and an outside class!!! I gave my oldest son a B for the semester in Spanish II. However, he is making high A’s in his dual credit Spanish class. I seem to be a harder grader than the “real” places around me.</p>
<p>We do online AP classes and dual credit at the cc to back up our grades in addition to test scores. If they were to see all A’s and then a 22 on the ACT that would tell them something. If they see my oldest getting all A’s and 1 B and a 34, then that tells them something else.</p>
<p>Believe me, many homeschoolers are giving a MUCH better education than the local ps. There are some slackers or those that “call” themselves homeschoolers that do not, but their kids wouldn’t do well in the ps either. I was a public school high school teacher for 5 years and parental involvement was the key!!!</p>
<p>Most schools are very familiar with homeschoolers these days and have information specifically for homeschoolers on their websites. We’ve found that they usually pay little attention to homeschool GPA and often require homeschoolers to submit additional outside verification of academic preparedness - ie SATII Subject Test scores. (As for class rank, there are traditional schools that do not use class rank either.) And yes, many who homeschool through high school have taken dual enrollment classes at community colleges or 4-year universities. The transcripts from those schools will have to be submitted in the application process and the grades from those classes will be important. As far as difficulty in getting merit aid, it depends on the scholarship, who is administering it, etc. but being homeschooled will absolutely not prevent her from earning merit aid. The biggest difficulty might be regarding letters of recommendation as it is usually required that one or two be submitted by someone other than a parent. If the student has little involvement outside the home (extremely rare), and can’t get a good LOR, that could hold them back in those scholarships where LORs carry a lot of weight. There are a few highly competitive merit scholarships that heavily weigh the recommendation from high school guidance counselors. These are the ones where certain high schools are only allowed to submit one or two students for consideration. Usually these schools are well known to the administrators of the scholarship and so the recommendations in those cases might be at an advantage over a homeschooler who self-nominates. The Park Scholarship at NCSU would be an example of this, though I have seen two homeschoolers receive this scholarship in the last 3 years. Essays also sometimes carry significant weight in some merit scholarships, so any student wanting to be competitive would need to focus on writing excellent essays as well, but this would apply to a traditionally schooled student as well as a homeschooled one. </p>
<p>If a student has any concerns about not being eligible for specific merit aid, a phone call to the proper administrator would be in order. As for Alabama, I can assure you that being homeschooled will not keep her from being awarded merit aid.</p>