Roommate Selection and College Options for Home-Schooled Student

Student Lounge College Life
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@Sweetgum Thank you for your help. And this is a good thought, so I can do dual enrollment without taking more homeschool classes? I’ll have to look more into that

I mean, I would rather strike a balance- better than a community/state school, but not so much as one of those overly fancy (needlessly expensive) private schools (such as Yale, Harvard, etc)

I’m not completely sure where we stand on the “religious” arguement anymore, the last time they said anything was over a year ago. But maybe that is something we should talk about again soon

Really? Berea college sounds really interesting. I’m definitely going to look into that (however, I also want a job that I can get paid for to get a headstart on a career too, so I’m not sure)

And thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.
Usually, the advice from the parents/teachers here (who have already gone through this) is more what I want to pay attention to rather than the ones from students (my age or younger) who are also worrying and confused about it just as I am

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@Creekland I agree. If I’m being truly honest, I feel like I’m not prepared at all. I can usually learn fairly easily, but I don’t have good college prep at all. My parents have rarely made me take tests/exams, we did what we had to do, but we never took that aspect too seriously.
In my mind, when I was younger, I thought this was great, but now I feel like I’ve been set back much farther than I should be at my level. Maybe I am smart (I learn things really quickly sometimes that it surprises myself :sweat_smile:) but maybe not, because I don’t feel like I do as well as I should sometimes. I believe that I do have a bad foundation, because until recently (senior year) we didn’t even really try to think long-term

I had Biology, only once.
I’m taking foreign language classes this year, but only using Rosetta Stone, but I actually enjoy learning new languages, so I do alot of self-learning as well (looking things up online, YT videos, etc) My parents didn’t present foreign language as an option to me until they saw, this year, that having at least one foreign language class is required to graduate in our state.

My parents had me using Abeka when I was young, but once I started highschool, we use at least 3 different corriculums/brands, just whatever has what we are looking for at the time. I was encouraged from an early age to choose the “easiest” courses. Minimum so I can graduate on time without problem. But now, I feel lost and confused by everything. I’m not mad at my parents, I know they tried, but I wish I had, at the time, known enough to do my own research well before now, and try to go beyond what I have been put into rather than just going with the minumum that I thought I was capable of (I wish I had been able to do my best, as I feel like I am capable of more than I ever thought I was, But maybe not and maybe I’m wrong. Either way, there is no need to worry about that now, it’s done. The best thing I can do is just do what I can to catch up to where I believe I should be)

I know I can never be too prepared, but I also don’t want to disappoint everyone by delaying graduation for a year… and I am just really confused. There is so much to think about.
I will take one of those practice tests though, but I’m not sure if I should study and prepare more first or not.

Not that I know of, there may be some volunteer options, but I wouldn’t know what. And my choices are limited for now, as both of my parents work and I don’t have a driver’s license/vehicle yet.

Thank you for all your help, truly. I will still be reaching out more to you for help if that’s ok

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Thank you! I will be taking the practice test soon, when I have the time to prepare and take it

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There are actually 8 official released SAT practice tests so you can use them well.

It’s important to really analyze the ones you get wrong to understand what mistakes you made or where you need to increase your knowledge. Or maybe you have content mastery but ran out of time, in which case you need to work on speed, which is usually accomplished by lots of practice.

Have you taken the PSAT?

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Thank you for helping me out. I do have an open mind and I am not “excluding” colleges. It’s just me, trying to consider what I know and trying to think of every aspect and trying to learn so much that is new and different for me. Before I start deciding exactly what colleges to look into, and picking out fancy “religious” colleges, I need to consider everything else first.

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Not yet. I wanted to be sure I’m ready first
But I will, I guess from the sounds of it, I should do it sooner rather than later

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Some students find that they do better on the ACT than on the SAT. Also, I think that the ACT is easier to prep for, than is the SAT. My kid’s PSATs predicted an overall score of about 1400, but when he tried that ACT practice test, he got nearly 36 on the English and reading, maybe a 32 on the math, and a 30 on the science. However, he realized from trying the practice test that he could bring the science score way up, since it wasn’t really science - it was data interpretation, and for that, all he’d have to do was a few practice sections, until he’d familiarized himself with every type of data that they presented. He did a bunch of science sections, used a review book to prep for the math, and wound up with a 36 overall, with a 34 in the math, 36 on the other three sections. I really doubt that the same say 40-60 total hours of prep would have gotten him a higher than 1500 SAT.

In your case, the issue is seeing where your homeschooling has put you, in relation to your peers. Since the ACT seems to be more about measuring what you have learned, and a bit less about your ability to figure out tricky questions, I think that the ACT might give a more accurate representation of your homeschooling. But definitely do try a practice test in each, and see how you do.

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You shouldn’t prepare for taking one of these practice tests. Just take it! It’s to get an idea of where you are now. Believe me, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to prep and practice. The idea of this is to see which test you’re better suited for, and to get a baseline idea of where you’re scoring, without prep.

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Awesome information that really helps!

Try both a practice ACT and SAT now with no more prep. Let’s see how you do. It will show you (and us) your gaps. Don’t worry about the score. Practice tests are there to show you what you need to shore up.

I fully agree with the previous posters who said to try both because students often do better on one or the other. Two of mine did better with the ACT. One had equal scores across them. Colleges don’t care which one is submitted, so it’s wise to go with whichever one shows your talents better. Before you take the “real” one, you can have prepped a bit more.

From what you’ve written, I sense your intelligence and know you can do well, but yes, your foundation could be less than many of your college bound peers. I love your attitude about not placing blame, but just going forward from here. That attitude will get you far in life.

If you have no plans for med school, starting at CC can easily be the best step for you. You’d have to decide if you want it for an official year of college or as a senior year of high school, but doing it as high school is likely to be less expensive, so would be my recommendation. When you finish there you can decide if you want a 4 year school (many credits would likely transfer) or do another at the community college, then transfer. Someone at the community college could probably give you great advice if you call and give them your story/goals. They will know the specific options you have and costs. Just remember if you start there as a college student it can easily affect going to a 4 year college the next year financially. There are some transfer scholarships, but not usually as many.

Resist the idea of segregating schools into categories like “overly fancy.” Each type has their specific pros and cons. At this point you don’t want to diss any of them. You just want to see which ones are right for you. This includes fit and finances. The top colleges can be the ones that offer the best finances if you get in, and they aren’t top solely due to name. They have great things (research, etc) going on there, as do top state schools. Success can come from any college, but the best overall experience comes from finding the best one for each individual student. That can range from a community college certificate or two year program to Top 20. There isn’t one answer that fits everyone.

For a foreign language, go online to Duolingo and sign up for their free lessons. They beat Rosetta Stone by a mile. Work through their lessons and stories (stories are only available in some languages). They also have some podcasts. The other thing my guys found helpful were books from the library - and native speakers online.

As soon as you can feel free to give us your ACT/SAT practice scores. Pending what they are, advice could change. You said you were looking for 2023, so there’s plenty of time.

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Alright, I’ll look into both of those! Thanks for the information

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@Creekland should I really try it without more prep? What if I don’t do well? But thank you. I will definitely try that and see how it goes
I have started prepping for the SAT, but now I realize that I haven’t even done much looking into the ACT yet, and I really need to consider all of my options right now. I feel though that I don’t really have a good foundation yet.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn

Thank you. I hope you are right and that I really will do well. I just don’t see any need to place blame, or to spend the time that I could be using to focus on going from here, by just worrying about the past, which can’t be changed.

While I don’t fully know what I want to do yet, I know that don’t plan for med school, and I feel like community college could be a good first step while I’m figuring that out. As for delaying senior year to take college classes, that could be a good option, especially if not doing so could affect my chances at a good college. But will they let me take it as a senior year when I have already finished all 12 grades? And will retaking another senior year, even just to start community college, make me look bad when I start applying for future, non community colleges?

I guess you have a good point there as well, I just tend to try to categorize things, such as colleges, when trying to make such a big decision. Rather than that though, I just want to try to find the one that is right for me in every way. It just usually seems that such colleges are much too expensive/hard to get into.
I just want to find one that is the best for me

I did try Duolingo before, for almost a year, this was even before I was required to take them for school. (I like to try and learn new things sometimes) but the “hearts” system, and the fact that they seem to use the same random words even after you have it down made it more difficult for me to learn at my speed.
I can try to get back into it though

Thank you for all the tips! And I will give my scores to you once I take the official practice tests. I just hope I do well…
I was maybe considering (if possible) taking community college courses for at least fall of 2022, then moving past that by 2023/2024, which is where the community colleges come in. But some time after I turn 18 (April of this year) I will most likely be getting a job as well, to help me adjust a bit easier

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Hey Starr, I’ll explain what I was thinking about taking Community College courses for an extended senior year.

I don’t know anything about homeschooling in Tennessee except what is on the state’s website here: https://www.tn.gov/education/school-options/home-schooling-in-tn.html

But in North Carolina to homeschool, you have to file a form to declare a homeschool and you have to do some sort of yearly test (like the Woodcock Johnson, etc) keep track of attendance(!) and that’s pretty much it. When we homeschooled when my oldest was in 11th grade we just used the ACT for our yearly test. You do not have to report the scores in any way in NC, but just have to have them on record in case the state wants to audit you. Then you are free to homeschool anyway you want to. You can follow a curriculum or make up your own lessons or you can un-school where the kid just learns whatever they are interested in.

It sounds like your parents have been following some sort of curriculum and you will have finished it in May? Is that right? If in Tennessee it’s like it is in NC, you don’t have to keep following that same curriculum and do more senior year from that company. In NC you could still declare you are homeschooling and have the dual enrollment at Community College count for your homeschool classes, but you’d need to research the rules in Tennessee. Do you have any friends who also homeschool? They might have some insight.

I think Community College could be a really good option for you. If you go ahead and graduate homeschool this year it might mean entering your 4 year college as a transfer, but it would be less of a leap.

I think you sound very mature and thoughtful about this whole process and I think you will do well wherever you end up.

Oh, and the reason to take the ACT or SAT practice tests w/o prep is to show you what you need to work on. For example if your math skills are great through Algebra, but you get stuck on some Geometry then you’d know you need to work on that.

I got these ACT prep books for my D22:
https://smile.amazon.com/Official-2021-2022-Practice-Online-Content/dp/1119787343/

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1732232008/

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1732232016/

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1796625841/

But there are a lot of resources online and you can often find last years ACT or SAT prep books in thrift stores.

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To be clear, it’s a practice test of each that you should try now, not the real test taken at a testing site. As @Sweetgum said, the purpose is to let you know where your strengths and weaknesses are. Our school runs test prep classes and kids there always start with a test to assess themselves. We’re not suggesting anything unusual for you. :sunglasses:

Duolingo has improved a bit lately. They still use odd words sometimes (how many people take their bears to parties in Germany???), but I find I keep up on my skills best by going through their stories. French, Spanish, and German have stories from my experience. Polish and Russian do not. I don’t know about the others. Whether you’ll have that option or not depends upon your language.

My homeschooled kids did Rosetta Stone for 4 years. At the end my oldest couldn’t even place out of first semester at college, and this with getting straight As via Rosetta Stone’s grading. I was not impressed. We switched to library books for my second son. He told me he learned more in a couple of weeks with the books than he had learned from his two years of Rosetta Stone.

By homeschooling, you get to decide what you did each year. If your practice tests don’t show a solid enough foundation for you to feel comfortable entering college level classes, it really would be wise to shore up your skills from cc first. Community colleges have placement tests for math. After seeing where you stand on the ACT/SAT, you could take one of those at your cc to see where they would put you in a class. That would be helpful knowledge to have too.

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@Sweetgum Thank you! We do have do declare as homeschool, but we don’t usually take a yearly test. I’m not sure if it’s not required, or if we are supposed to and my parents just don’t do it. But I have never had that before here.

They kind of have been following a corriculum, but we’ve been more all over the place
(small aspects of multiple curriculums at once) once I started highschool
But we haven’t really followed it too strictly I guess. I will likely be finishing in May

And not many. I’m not sure how to find those rules for Tennessee specifically (or more inportantly, how to know if it’s a trusted source)

Thank you! And thanks for the tips

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@Creekland That’s true. I guess sometime soon, I need to set apart some time to take a whole practice test (is collegeboard.org a reputable source for that? That, partnered with Khan Academy, is what I would likely take my practice tests from) I know it’s not unusual, I just don’t want to fail at it :sweat_smile:

Really? Because alot of my Duolingo sentences (French, in this case) consisted of “the dog is eating a croissant” and other silly words/phrases that I would rarely use in real time.
I guess I should try using both Duolingo and Rosetta Stone and see what I like better.
I also do self-studying, such as youtube videos, when it comes to things I’m interested in, so I’ll look into my options

I’ll take it, then try to see how strong my foundation is from there. Again, thank you for all the help

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Yes collegeboard is the official provider of the SAT. They have 8 practice tests available here:

Here’s the site for the ACT

You should download one of SAT tests and take it as a timed test, and do the same for one ACT test. That leaves plenty more for studying from and assessing your progress. They all test the same material. In fact, for the SAT at least, they were all “real” tests given at some point in the past.

Don’t think of this first sample test as a test that you pass or fail. Instead, think of it as a metric that helps you figure out if there are any “holes” in your education while there is still plenty of time to address that. So this first test will be an assessment, not a real test. And you will take it at home as practice. As was mentioned above, don’t sign up for a real test at a testing site — that’s not what any of us are recommending!

And lots of people do this. My kids both did and I have helped others do this, and one of my sons is an SAT tutor and that’s what he recommends for starting because it helps establish a baseline.

Please see my post above about tips on using the practice tests efficiently.

Edited to clarify that although the sample tests all test the same material, they use different questions to do so, and that’s why it’s okay to use one test as a baseline and save others for additional practice and to Gauge progress.

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Editing to add that the tests are available both online and as a downloadable pdf. I recommend downloading and printing the pdf because the actual exam is still a paper test and that gets you used to their format.

The actual ACT may be available online, though.

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Thanks fpr the information. I took one of those recently now. But also, how are they different? (Rather than the first SAT practice test, I accidentally took one of the last ones and didn’t realize until it was too late. How would that affect my score?

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It doesn’t matter. They are not progressive, they are not learning tools that become more and more difficult. They’re just multiple retired tests (same for the ACT), whose purpose is to help you figure out what you need help with. If you took an entire SAT, under timed conditions, without looking anything up, and graded it and came up with a score, please let us know. If your diagnostic score was low, we would probably be recommending community college, possibly as a homeschooling senior. If it’s very high, we might be recommending shooting higher than a state college. Because you write well, but had a non-standard education, a diagnostic SAT or ACT score would be extremely helpful in figuring out what would be the appropriate next step for you.

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As parentologist already noted, it doesn’t matter the order in which you take the tests. They all test the same material, but with different questions, which makes them a great resource to assess your strengths and weaknesses and then to target those weaknesses before taking another timed test.

When you review your answers, it is good to note for yourself whether you were sure of your correct answer or whether you had some doubts (or if it was a lucky guess). Also note those questions where you would have gotten them correct, but you ran out of time. Then you can set up a study plan to target any holes in your education – whether that’s learning a concept for the first time because you were never taught it, or working on getting more proficient/faster for a topic that you know but perhaps not well enough to have the mastery that these tests require. And of course, knowing the target score you are aiming for is important – almost no one gets a perfect score, and most applicants score far below that.

And of course, many colleges are test-optional these days – although some may still require tests for homeschooled students. That’s where the SAT (and/or SAT subject tests and/or AP tests) can show mastery. Alternatively, as others have mentioned upstream, taking some community college courses can also show the rigor and mastery that many colleges will want to see.

Based on what you have already reported and also on how well you present yourself in your posts, you are clearly intelligent and mature. I am sure you will do well academically at college – its just with your unusual background, it is best to determine if there are any subject areas where you may need to enhance your current knowledge and skills. That’s what we are hoping the SAT assessment will show, and what can be used as a roadmap going forward.

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