Homeschoolers aiming too low?

Pre-College Issues Home Schooling and College
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<p>I think peer pressure may actually be playing a role in homeschoolers post-high school goals. </p>

<p>Concerns raised by homeschoolers about 4-year colleges often concern:
1) Morals
2) Expense (many if not most homeschoolers are from single-income families)</p>

<p>Many of the hs'ers I know are planning on doing either "Accelerated Distance Learning" or community college (possibly then transferring to a 4-year school to finish up the BA) after high school. Parents are enthusiastic about cc and ADL because the kids live at home (minimizing concerns about morals); and because the cost is SO much less than the traditional 4-year college route. </p>

<p>Certainly in our homeschool commnity, even for kids of college-educated parents, the norm is either cc or ADL. The homeschool students I know who are going these routes are, naturally enough, talking about their experiences and persuading others that they should not "waste" money on a 4-year college program when they can get the degree more cheaply in other ways. In our homeschool community there is a fair amount of pressure to NOT send your child away to college. </p>

<p>So I have found myself in the bizarre situation of having to explain why we are sending our kids to 4-year colleges! This lack of understanding is hard on our kids. People keep on telling us what fools we are for having our kids waste time at college when they could be doing Accelerated Distance Learning and getting their degrees in 1/4 the time!</p>

<p>I think in a few years people will know more about ADL -- does it work? Can a kid get into law school with an ADL degree? Do kids with ADL degrees get the types of job offers they might receive if they went to a 4-year college? But until more stories of either success or failure are in, ADL is seen as the route to a college degree that involves the least moral and financial risk. </p>

<p>So I see homeschoolers succumbing to peer pressure to not send their kids away from home for college, possibly resulting in lower academic achievement in the long run.</p>

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<p>I do agree that SAT's are weighted considerably heavier on home-schooled students UNLESS they have some accredited program during their HS years. For example, in CA, state schools would not highly consider home school without an accredited class, so I ended up going the cc route. Because my mother saw how things worked for me, she enrolled my sister into classes through a distance learning college program. Even with considerably lower SAT's than I had, she was accepted to Berkeley on a full scholarship. At the same time, other lower state colleges rejected her.</p>

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<p>I can't see ADL working that well in engineering and you lose the opportunities for research (in a research institution) and networking.</p>

<p>Our daughter starts CC tomorrow morning but she's 15 and we'll figure out what to do with her along the way.</p>

<p>Many here come from what appear to be wealthy backgrounds and can afford private schools and their relationships with the best universities. Many on the trading boards this weekend commented on how light the traffic was this weekend and how quiet things were in the stores. I think that $4 gasoline is taking a toll and homeschoolers would feel the economic pinch a little sooner than others would with mostly single incomes.</p>

<p>Our son is a sophomore in an out-of-state university at 18 and I gave him the option to go wherever he wanted to but he chose a local state U. He lost 18 months of studies due to health problems so he would have been done with his BS at a fairly early age without the problems.</p>

<p>There are HS college email lists but they've been fairly quiet lately. Not sure what the reason is.</p>

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<p>cockatiel, it's funny, because the ideas you mentioned as being prevalent in the homeschool community are exactly where I was about 8 years ago. In addition to keeping the kids home due to moral concerns, we were very interested in ADL and in the apprenticeship option. I don't think cc was even on our radar.</p>

<p>Then, at age 13, S1 declared that he wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. H told me that he'd like me to prepare S so that he could be competitive for admission there. What?! This was not the plan! But, being the dutiful wife I am ;-) I set out to prepare S1...hoping that S or H would change his mind before the time came. </p>

<p>Well, instead of the AF Academy, S1 ended up on ROTC scholarship at a university 2 hours from home. This fall, S2 will start college 1,500 miles from home (also on an ROTC scholarship).</p>

<p>The scholarships took care of the financial end of things, thankfully. I still had the moral concerns, of course, but things have worked out so well. The funny thing is that many of S1's homeschooled friends are attending his university, so I think that helped to keep him grounded. Also, even the challenges have been beneficial. S1 has had the opportunity to experience challenges to his beliefs and to learn to stand for what he believes.</p>

<p>S2's college is in California, <em>and</em> he's going to be majoring in film production, so we have concerns all over again about the moral issues, as you can imagine! :-)</p>

<p>As an aside, with our D (who is the oldest), we stuck with our plan of preparing her to serve in some kind of ministry until the time she was married. Not such a great plan. She started serving in a ministry for a short time after high school but was sent home for allegedly flirting with boys there. After that, she wasn't interested in working in any other ministries and she really floundered. </p>

<p>We tried to talk her into college at that point, but we had not raised her with that being a possibility, and she wasn't interested. She worked at the mall for a year (yeah, we were not too happy about that), spent 3 months in Korea teaching English (that was okay), then came home and got a job as a live-in nanny (well....it was better than the mall). Eventually, she met a guy (on MySpace...yes, you can imagine how we felt about that) and was married a year ago (she was 22). Against all odds, they are very happy together. He is a soldier and they are enjoying the adventure of being stationed in Europe. It doesn't seem to bother her a bit that she can't get a "good" job, but she says when she gets back to the states she'd like to perhaps pursue a 2 year degree. I'm guessing they'll be ready for a baby by then, so we'll see.</p>

<p>All that to say that I regret that we didn't send our D to college also. In her case, we'd have had to come up with a less expensive option since she would not have pursued an ROTC scholarship, but we could have gone the CC and transfer route. I tried to convince her to do ADL, and she seemed interested but would not ever start. The main problem with all that was that we had not raised her with a college mindset, so she just wasn't willing.</p>

<p>My cautions for families considering ADL are that very few young people are disciplined enough to actually do it, and that it's actually quite expensive. When I researched all of that for our D, it was going to cost about $20,000 to earn a degree through Thomas Edison State College. I know that's pocket change compared to a traditional university, but I think going the CC then transfer route would cost less if there is a 4 year college close enough for the student to live at home. </p>

<p>Like you, I will be interested to see how the kids with these degrees do in the future. I know families who have talked about doing it, but personally don't know anyone who has really done it.</p>

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<p>I have noticed that too</p>

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<p>My oldest ended up at a 4 year college straight from homeschool high school. With his bent (he has always been academically oriented) and his major, a 4 year college just made sense. My oldest daughter will be at our community college this fall as a nursing major. She can easily finish up her 4 year degree when her associates degree is completed but for right now, the comm college is a better fit than a 4 year college. Each one is different and has different needs. </p>

<p>I find that so many of her homeschooled peers took so many community college classes during high school that in many ways it make sense for them to finish up and get associate degrees and then transfer. A 4 year school will generally take all of your credits if you transfer in with a completed 2 year degree. Many times, they don't take all of your credits if you transfer in with an incomplete 2 year degree. </p>

<p>My daughter earned 30 college credits during her high school years. So, it just won't take all that long to finish a 2 year degree.</p>

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<p>I haven't seen this, but I also might have a skewed sample. Our son wanted to start college at 6 (hardly low aiming in my opinion), applied and was admitted at age 8, and we allowed him to start at 9. At 13, he had two BS degrees (CS and math) and then was an independent consultant for a year before starting at MIT at age 14 (he earned his M.S. at 16 and is working toward the Ph.D. there now; he has for years been debating applying for an MBA and/or JD after the doctorate as he has since age 2 wanted to have his own tech company and feels all these programs would help him in having skills to run a business). Other homeschoolers from our area that come to mind (as we've known all these people personally; they've all been people our son met outside of college, but not all from his particular homeschool groups)...</p>

<p>One started MIT at age 16.
One graduated with her bachelor's at age 15 (she and my son first met when she was 3 and he was 4 and she also started college at age 9; like our son, she had a scholarship).
One starts college in fall at a top 2 college.
One got her bachelor's at I think 20 with a 4.0 GPA and immediately landed a pretty sweet journalism position right out of college.
One started at a 4-year U at 13 (on a partial scholarship that covered more than 1/2 of tuition) and graduated at 19 with a 4.0 GPA and landed one of only 12 spots in Harvard Medical School's fully financed M.D./Ph.D. program in 2005 (she also had a research paper published at age 16 that was on the cover of a major science journal).
One started at a 4-year U at 11 (full ride for tuition; commuted from home or likely would have had room and board covered as well) and graduated magna cum laude with a math degree at 16 and then added a BS in physics at 17 while also in a doctoral program in physics at a top physics grad program.
One started at a 4-year U at 12 and I think got his BS in CS at 16 and was to get his MS at 17 (didn't hear if he did, but I suspect he did).</p>

<p>I could go on and on here, but I wouldn't say most homeschoolers in our area have aimed low. Many have also started at 4-year U's on scholarships at the typical age.</p>

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<p>I've noticed this too, with my cousins. I think one of the reasons for this, can be like in my cousin's case, SAT and ACT scores. They're scores weren't so good, so getting in a community college which didn't look at that was much easier to get into. Also, it could possibly due to cost, or it could be due to the lack of knowledge of other schools, and why or why not the other schools could be a better fit than community schools. I do believe though, that if a person is properly home-schooled, and given the proper education, and proper advice, then they will aim high, but if they are the "sheltered" types where they have little to no connection with the outside world, they most likely won't see the need to go to a four-year school, and are really just happy to go anywhere.</p>