<p>I'm going to be home schooled via Florida Virtual School this coming semester, but am afraid it may affect my college admissions. I will be taking rigorous classes. Is the term "homeschooled to Harvard" really not as uncommon as it seems? </p>
<p>NG: in recent posts, you’ve taken to reciting HYP often. Why is this so? Suddenly top “name” schools are getting serious inquiry. My caution for you in another thread was to be wary of going down that rabbit hole – it’s often displayed by HS posters on this site. Your job is to honestly evaluate yourself and then create a viable suite of target colleges – don’t be like one current ranting HS sophomore-to-be poster on the Harvard forum who achieved a 2.6 Fr GPA but is insistent on attending Harvard and also is advising others how to do the same. Clearly he’s delusional.</p>
<p>As for homeschoolers – they face the additional challenge validating their academic and character issues by LORs. Unless some portion of your academics (i.e. research) is overseen by an objective outsider who can attest to your stunning ability, top school admissions presents many hurdles for homeschoolers. Also, it’s a given that you need to have amazing SAT/ACTs to back up your transcript.</p>
<p>@nerdygirlyy,</p>
<p>Here is a graph from the Crimson from their just-published survey of incoming freshmen, class of 2018:</p>
<p><a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2018 By the Numbers”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/makeup/</a></p>
<p>As you can see, roughly 0.3% of incoming freshmen who responded to the survey reported being homeschooled. That’s five freshmen in a class of 1667.</p>
<p>That seems kind of bleak. After all, homeschoolers comprise a much larger percentage of the school-age population than 0.3%. So, it is uncommon to go from homeschooling to Harvard. However, in your case, I’m not sure that Harvard would count you as homeschooled. The Florida Virtual School is technically a public school. Depending on your status as a FLVS student, upon successful completion of a high school curriculum, you may actually receive a high school diploma. It is apparent that upon the successful completion of a course, you’ll be sent an official, sealed transcript for the course. From what I gather from the FLVS website, records are kept by the state for each student. Who keeps the records exactly depends on your actual status with the system, whether you are formally a public school student from a specific public school, or a full-time FLVS student, or formally registered as a homeschooler. In any event, some institutional entity will keep your official records. You’ll need to research how to make use of those official records when you’re applying to college.</p>
<p>It does appears that it is possible to generate formal transcript materials from an accredited school institution through your participation in the FLVS program. You’ll need to research it further to make sure you go about things in a way that maximizes what you get out of it.</p>
<p>Another point to keep in mind is that homeschoolers often value things a little differently than folks who go to traditional schools. We homeschooled our sons through 8th grade and then sent them off to a local Catholic high school. Both our sons are at Harvard. But we know many students who homeschooled through high school, and some of them were quite accomplished, academically, including multiple National Merit Finalists. Yet, none of the homeschooled students we know went off to the Ivy League. Why? None of them applied. Some of them wound up at some very good schools, but among homeschoolers, there seems to be less of a view toward getting into “name brand” schools. Many of the choices of homeschoolers that we know were schools that were off the beaten track, schools with unique features that appealed to the unique students that we know. In fact, truth be told, a number of the homeschoolers that we know were a bit condescending toward us and our children that they applied to, and were accepted to Harvard. Sort of a reverse snobbery. Go figure.</p>
<p>So, my suspicion is that part of the reason there are so few homeschoolers at Harvard is because they’re less likely to apply.</p>
<p>My suggestion to you: Do the research to find out how best to leverage your educational experience with FLVS in terms of college application; and focus on your schoolwork for now, work really hard to do really well. The better you do, the more and better choices you’ll have when you’re ready to apply. And it’s nice to have choices.</p>
<p>I do know two former homeschoolers that went to Harvard. One was an insanely accomplished young lady. Another was an insanely gifted young man who started at 14.</p>
<p>My homeschooled son did not apply to Harvard, Stanford, or most Ivies, but was accepted to Princeton and Penn, the two Ivies he applied to.</p>
<p>Hey everyone! Thanks so much for your inputs @T26E4 I am interested in many other colleges and am using HYP as an example because I feel like they’re a representation of the best-of-the-best schools! I do completely understand that no one is a shoe-in for any of these schools, and just to clarify, I do not feel entitled, nor qualified, for any, especially so early on in highschool!! I’ve heard the term “home school to Harvard” a few times so I used it- and saw that thread about the guy with the 2.6 feeling very accomplished for Harvard… hmmm maybe a ■■■■■? </p>
<p>@sbjdorlo Wow congrats to your son on Princeton and Penn! What kind of home school program did you do? </p>
<p>Hey @notjoe, Thanks so much for your advice! and congratulations to your two sons at Harvard! </p>
<p>No program, per se, nerdygirlyy. We just followed my son’s interests, used the community college extensively, did a few university audited classes, and a combo of online, local, and self-study courses. We live in a city, so there are lots of great options.</p>
<p>On Harvard’s admissions page, they have a detailed response to how homeschoolers are evaluated and what you need to do. No surprises here: document your learning and achievement, take the tests, get references, send supplemental material if necessary. The virtual school is not homeschooling, really. You will have an official transcript from the school as well as a diploma. </p>
<p>We are using a similar approach but less emphasis on CC. Daughter is taking validated Coursera and EdX classes, too. For the self-study or parent taught, how did you document? Did you just include it on the transcript with the other “official” courses? </p>
<p>Not sure if you’re asking me, Willow613, but I didn’t validate self-study classes other than writing a description of the course in the transcripts. I combined everything in my transcripts. For that son, I only sent CC and my transcripts. He was a super, duper strong candidate, so there were plenty of other parts of his application that validated who he was.</p>
<p>For my current HS senior, I am tacking on several of the outside transcripts onto my own. So, I have cut and pasted an AoPS class grade and I’ll do that with a Coursera class, too, and probably a co-op class, just to show the grades are legit. This son is much weaker in terms of how advanced he is, so I feel like it’s more important to validate these grades. But he’ll also have about 40 units of community college, and I’ll send those transcripts, as well.</p>
<p>Can you get information on where kids using FLVS have gotten into college? some sort of Naviance results that many schools provide? Home school is a very general term. I know kids who were home schooled because they were top notch in some EC, on a national or even international scale, and to do this sort of thing, spending the hours in a traditional school was not possible. In that setting, many kids got into highly selective schools, got some highly competitive awards. A lot of homeschooled kids do not go to any official school because they have disabilities and issues that make it problematic and getting what they need customized at home works better. That group may have a lot of kids not even going to college. So the statistics are comprised of all kinds of students. Best you look and see what the results are for FLVS students who have taken the college prep courses. That and your test scores will be good indicators of whether highly selective colleges are realistic for you.</p>