Saturday Afternoon Vent

Pre-College Issues Home Schooling and College
1

<p>I have comfortably homeschooled my school-aged children for years, but find myself becoming increasingly nervous as my eldest enters 9th grade this fall.</p>

<p>I feel pressure because of the multiple hats I have to wear -- I'm parent, teacher AND guidance counselor. If my D went to regular school, she'd have access to many cookie-cutter ECs; I'd look at her report card and tell her to do her homework, and would probably believe that she'd be adequately prepared for the college application process when the time came.</p>

<p>As is, I'm worried that choices we make may limit D's choices later. For example, I'm fed up with the UC system's science requirements, and have decided not to jump through extra hoops to accommodate them.</p>

<p>What about you, do you think a homeschooler has to work that much harder to be accepted by a top tier school?</p>

2

<p>homeschooling usually means socially inept kids- now im not saying your kids are- but just put them in a regular school- it will be better for them and they can still get a good education/social life and who cares if they do cookie cutter ec's anyway- if they dont get into harvard big deal</p>

3

<p>Hard Knocks, I think homeschooling can actually be a big plus in an application to a top tier school. There are different ways to approach it, but as you child is just beginning 9th grade, you have the advantage of really doing well whatever approach you take.</p>

<p>My son had more time for his one major EC because he was homeschooled, and he could take college classes early because of the flexibility of his schedule, which was fun and very interesting for him, and incidentally made for a great transcript.</p>

<p>As for the guidance counselor... that was an eye-opener. I mean, I know there are some very good ones out there, but I wouldn't trust an overloaded counselor who barely knows my kid with that crucial support in the application process. You know, if you want something done right, do it yourself! ;)</p>

<p>There are homeschoolers accepted to top tier schools all the time. Mine is heading to Amherst next month.</p>

<p>Obviously if your heart's not in it, then it just isn't, and school is certainly an option. But be assured many homeschoolers have found great ways to "homeschool" high school, even if not much of it is actually in the home at that point.</p>

4

<p>Many of us here have had home schoolers admitted to top tier schools, but I admit that I don't understand the UC requirements.<br>
As a parent I certainly felt extra responsibility that things would work out well for my kids in the end. I can identify with your feelings.
My kids had the best guidance counselor possible because I was able to peruse books at the library, haunt CC, and best of all know my kids better than a school guidance counselor possibly could. Home schooling also allowed my kids to visit colleges in September and October, when students were there. Visiting when students aren't around is a waste, IMO.
The teacher part for many of us gets very easy. Most of us don't do it. Kids either take college or other outside classes, or else read independently, which is what mine did.
As for your hat as a parent, you are giving them the gift of your time. John Holt predicted few people would choose to home school because they didn't want to spend much time with their kids. How many times have you heard people say "I'm glad the summer's over. The kids go back to school".</p>

5

<p>Another homeschooling parent, a good friend of mine, was planning all along that her kid would go to a UC. She also got fed up with the ridiculous nit-picking in the admissions requirements; for example, only certain high school textbooks are acceptable for use in certain classes. Absurd things.</p>

<p>Anyway, she and her kid ditched the idea of UCs and he ended up at top tier LAC.</p>

<p>It's a shame how they have rigged the process. I understand it isn't that bad at all UCs. Is that true? Some are more homeschooler-friendly?</p>

6

<p>Thank you for the supportive feedback. I think to homeschool means (at least in my case) to constantly second-guess myself, so it's good to hear from people who've been there, done that, and succeeded.</p>

<p>UC Riverside is very welcoming of homeschoolers. They accept portfolios in lieu of the standard application:
UCR:</a> UC Riverside Welcomes Homeschool Students</p>

<p>Supposedly the other schools are closely watching this program, so perhaps their policies will someday change. </p>

<p>I'm curious about the community college classes. Do your children find them challenging and engaging? My H's biggest fear is that a class would be too easy, thereby teaching our D poor habits (you don't have to study to do well) or taking away from her love of learning. I guess it depends on the class and on the community?</p>

7

<br>


<br>

<p>I was at a homeschool park day on Friday, and was commiserating with another mom with four children about how difficult it is to homeschool multiple kids. I said it's hard to work 1:1 with one of my children if the others are picking fights with each other or otherwise interrupting. Her response was why would I possibly want to spend 1:1 time with any of them? She unschools and has to get everyone out of the house first thing in the morning so they don't figuratively kill each other. </p>

<p>So I guess my point, if I had to have one, is that sometimes homeschooling parents also want to get away from it all! :-)</p>

8

<p>re post#2
your standards for what passes for social skills and a good education must be low indeed.
i DO NOT want my kids to have the same social ineptness, harmful social life, and ridiculous education that most public schools offer.</p>

9

<p>there is nothing wrong with "second guessing" if that means being certain that you are doing your best for your child. it shows that you are willing to make necessary changes to improve outcomes, refocus, set new goals and improve standards.</p>

10

<br>


<br>

<p>I'm going to embrace that spin, thank you!</p>

<p>Re: social skills and education, my D did briefly try a program in which she went to a traditional classroom twice a week. The novelty soon wore off, and she begged to leave so she could learn more and be more efficient with her time. She also tired of the conversations about boys and dating and movies. She has a close-knit group of homeschool friends -- they sew, they try to catch lizards, they invent their own board games, they train their dogs together, etc.</p>

11

<p>On the issue of community college classes --</p>

<p>I'm certain it varies widely. My daughter took "freshman comp" at a community college. She was a strong writer already, but she took it to get it out of the way. The first quarter (they call it WR 121 here in Oregon) was mostly a waste of time. It was too easy, slow moving, and she didn't learn anything she didn't already know. The second quarter, on the other hand, was WR 122 and she took it as a correspondence class because it was a bit of a schlep to get her up to the CC a couple times a week. That class was very rigorous, demanding, and she learned a ton. It was essentially all about academic writing relying on a wide array of resources. The instructor was a tough grader, and there was a ton of work involved - every step of the paper composition process over and over, draft after draft. She did very well in the class, but she did have to work hard for it.</p>

<p>So... even at the same CC the experience can be different from one class to the next. And different CCs can be wholly different, too.</p>

<p>She used the CC as a means to an end, more than going there for the holisitc learning experience. My son, on the other hand, did an Early Entry program for high school aged students at the local 4-year university. That was a terrific academic experience for him, his classes were very good and he enjoyed them greatly. My daughter was too young to take classes there (she was 15, and students need to be 16 for the Early Entry program), but she's going to start at that same 4-yr univ. this fall as a full-time regular freshman at 16 years old. Certainly not a "top tier" school, but she was eager to get on with college, doesn't jones after the highly-ranked-school thing in the same way my son did, and plans to transfer after a year anyway.</p>

<p>You can look around and assess your resources. There is a CC, sounds like, but is there a state college around with an early option for high school aged kids to take a class or two? Many colleges (both cc and 4-yr) have online or correspondence courses. (My daughter did Latin by correspondence from Univ. of AZ. That worked out well for her.) Some places have many more options for kids than others, but going outside the home for classes during the teen years can really take a little pressure off as a parent, as well as be a productive option for the student.</p>

12

<p>My son is going to Caltech this fall - he also got accepted to MIT. Since he got in EA at both, he chose not to apply to any other schools. </p>

<p>He did apply to four UCs, because the deadline was before the EA decisions were out. He applied to UCLA, UCB, UCSD and and UCSC. Technically, my son had none of the A-H requirements, but they only really count those coming from a source accredited by them. On paper, he did have the equivalent of all, except the fine art requirement.</p>

<p>UC has an alternate path to acceptance. It is called (something like)acceptance by exam. They look at your SAT I score, plus 2 SAT II scores. Basically, if they are high enough, then they will look at your application. Apparently only a couple of hundred kids do this each year. </p>

<p>So, my son got accepted to UCLA (with honors and the offer of a regents), UCB and UCSD (which gave him no honors, but then the math dept sent him a letter saying he was one of their stronger applicants). UCSC, one of the least selective UCs sent him a letter saying he was in the top 1% of the the pool and then rejected him. Go figure!</p>

<p>My son had high SAT scores, plus 7 5s on his APs (and would have had 4 more from his senior year). He also had a lot of very impressive honors in mathematics. I was curious how the UCs would handle his application. They did a good job - esp UCLA. UCSC is just plain weird, but has gotten quite a few laughs from people we know.</p>

<p>Regarding to OP - none of what I said about the UC is really relevant to you. Last year, they made a decision to revamp their whole system, with the goal of making it easier for kids who do not have the A-H requirements to still get into UCs. This is not really a response to homeschooling, but more a response to some public schools having poor counseling, thus eliminating good kids from the system. Homeschoolers will benefit. </p>

<p>I, too, felt daunted in the early days of homeschooling. I feel like I stopped being a teacher, and started being the counselor. I learned a little at a time (you do have several years), and by the time he applied to college I was ready. </p>

<p>I also agree - cc's are a great solution. They wouldn't have worked for my son, and my 15 yo D refuses to do anything that would oppose a schedule. Good luck!</p>

13

<p>'rentof2 and anotherparent, thank you for sharing the accomplishments of your children!</p>

<p>Indulge me follow up questions re: APs. When I attended a competitive public high school in NY, we took AP classes in junior and senior year. Reading these boards, I'm surprised to learn about students taking them their freshman year, or for example that their first biology class is AP level. </p>

<p>Has college admissions become that much more competitive, that students need to take harder classes earlier than before to show their worthiness? Or is this the norm only on this board?</p>

<p>Did your S self-study for the APs?</p>

<p>Cheers.</p>

14

<p>My answer to your question, "Has college admissions become that much more competitive, that students need to take harder classes earlier than before to show their worthiness?", would probably be YES if you're talking about top tier schools. Not so much that those courses need to be taken earlier, but that you need to take them earlier in order to rack up enough of them to present a very rigorous course of study over 4 years. Again, though, I'm only talking about a narrow band of the most selective colleges.</p>

<p>That said, homeschoolers are in a different arena. There are some that self-study or do online or correspondence classes (or live in areas where homeschoolers can take selected classes at their local public high school). Some homeschoolers end up with quite a long list of APs like Anotherparent's son. On the other hand, I don't think college admissions officers would necessarily <em>expect</em> that from a homeschooled applicant.</p>

<p>My son had only one AP class when he applied to Amherst. We live in one of the areas where homeschoolers can take a class at the local high school, and he took AP US History as a sophomore. (He took one more AP class at the HS as a senior --AP Comp-- but didn't take the test because he was already accepted to his college by then and they don't accept AP credit, nor will they use it to place students out of their required freshman writing seminar, so there was no point in taking the test.)</p>

<p>However, although he had almost no AP credits, he did take quite a few classes at the local public univ. through the Early Entry program. I imagine those credits did essentially the same service as more APs would have done, in that they showed that he challenged himself with high level studies and did well. I think there is more than one way to get the job done, including doing something far less structured than what my son did. It all depends on showing a level of excellence on whatever path the student takes, I think. But, yes, I do think it takes <em>something</em> pretty outstanding, or another special hook, to get into most of the very-selective colleges these days. That <em>something</em> though, might be a much softer factor than grades and test scores.</p>

<p>After my son took that one AP class at the high school, I was pretty disillusioned with APs. I mean, he did great, got an A in the class and 5 on the exam, but after all the years of homeschooling it seemed so test-focused (which is the point, of course) and not what we'd valued all along. That was one reason he opted to take college classes instead, because the seminar style of teaching/learning was more appealing. (Our local univ. is fairly small and there are very, very few traditional large lecture style classes, none of which my son took.) But he's a humanities kid and all about personal interaction. If he was pursuing math/sciences on that level AP classes might have been more pertinant, since those quantitative measures are the currency of the land there.</p>

<p>Anyway, long windy post... but kids can self-study for APs or take them by corresondence/online, or not take them at all. I think you just need to think it through as you go along with your kid and make choices that allow her to excel in her own way. But for 9th grade... there isn't any pressure there I don't think. Just use that time to lay foundations for whatever subjects and passions are likely to emerge. </p>

<p>In my son's case, I didn't really know what those subjects and passions were at that point, so we just covered the basic academic areas (english, math, science, social science, & foreign language) as a baseline. We actually ended up sticking with that model all the way through his high school years, except he ended up pursuing social sciences on the highest level by taking upper-division political science and philosophy classes at the local college.</p>

<p>Anyway he ultimately ended up with a transcript that had 4+ years worth of work in English and Social Science, 4 years in science and math (through college calc.), and 3 years of foreign language. But he started out as a freshman with lots of home study and a few homeschool co-op type classes thrown in.</p>

<p>It's a process. You kind of figure it out as you go along. It was a learning curve for me, but an interesting one.</p>

<p>My daughter, on the other hand, went about things completely differently! ;)</p>

15

<p>Oh, definitely more competitive. </p>

<p>Think about being an adcom - when you look at an applicant, you want to see that they are up to the task of a rigourous school environment. If the adcoms know the school, then they can get a feeling for it. With homeschoolers they just do not know, and it is our responsibility to prove it. College courses are a great way to show that, and so are AP courses. My son took 3 in 10th grade - Calc BC (self study) and both Physics Cs. For 11th grade, it was more difficult - I told him it was the year he proved to the schools, himself and his parents that he could handle difficult course load. He did Chem (Pahomeschoolers), APUSH (local homeschool group), Stat (PaHomeschoolers) and CS AB (self study). This year he took Euro, Psych and Econ (micro/macro). He didnt take the tests, because Caltech doesnt give credit.</p>

<p>You really need more than just a difficult workload to get into a selective college. They have tons of applicants who fit that description. You need something that will help you stand apart. For my son it was math competitions, academic summer camps and some research. Some schools may just be impressed that a homeschooler managed to accomplish so much.</p>

16

<p>There are many, many ways to satisfy the requirements of top tier schools.
My first two kids had been in elementary school, wanted out, and saw no point in submitting to a school setting again until they went off to college.
They didn't take any courses at home or online either, including AP ones. They just applied with the standard testing requirements for all applicants, although my son did take one extra Subject Test.
They didn't submit standard transcripts with grades or time frames, just reading lists sorted into subject matter categories that would make sense to an admissions person.
They both had time to become extremely well read (more so than they ever would have had a chance to do had they attended school), and my daughter pursued ballet intensively.
My son was admitted to several schools, including Johns Hopkins, Williams and Amherst, and attended Dartmouth. My daughter applied only to Princeton and finished her first year in May. Neither had much trouble adjusting to being back in formal school setting.
If your daughter thinks she may eventually be interested in a top tier school, she would likely hit (and need to hit) the California cut-offs for qualification by testing. If the curriculum requirements otherwise are a pain in the neck, it seems like an easy choice to me. The Subject Tests are particularly friendly to home schoolers. If someone loves a subject and has years to dig in, a top score is an easy matter.</p>

17

<p>My daughter did almost all her "course work" the way danas' daughter did. She read. She did do a prepared curriculum for math, as it's not a natural interest of hers and she wanted to make sure that base was covered, but she did the program at home, independently. And she did biology and chemistry at the local high school, foreign language by correspondence.</p>

<p>She has been very active in music and also in debate and public speaking, doing those things in a variety of venues.</p>

<p>Like danas mentioned, she relied on SAT Subject Tests to validate her work. She took 5 of them (world history, us history, literature, math1, and latin).</p>

<p>She is starting college early, but with plans to transfer she wanted those extra SAT subject test scores on her record for her transfer application. (At the time she applies for transfer they will be looking at her "high school" as well as her college record, since she won't have that many college credits at the time.)</p>

<p>She really appreciated the freedom she's had to work it all out on her own schedule and in her own way. On the other hand, she is not interested in pursuing admission into an elite school at this point, and so she just aimed to meet the requirements of the public university system for "non-traditional students" -- which in our case was certain scores on the SAT, 2 SAT subject tests (one had to be math), and 2 years of foreign language.</p>

<p>She actually has higher scores than my son who did get accepted to an elite school, but she's just a different kind of person.... after different kinds of things. Jumping through hoops over extended periods of time is something she has limited patience with. My son, on the other hand... if you hitch him to a wagon, he'll pull it... uphill.</p>

18

<p>This has been a great discussion, Hard Knocks, and I think you've gotten some good answers. I'll just add that our experience was similar - we did what worked for us - and it was very rewarded in admissions. </p>

<p>We travel a lot so didn't want to be tied to a schedule at the CC or local univ. So, we did AP classes - a few online, mostly self-study. My son knew we had no money for college (business start-up) so was very concerned about making sure the rigor of his education was clear. He was very active in the community in the things he loved as well. There's no way he could have followed his passions to the extent he did if he were in school 8 hours a day. It worked out great - a very good education and a full scholarship to a top school this fall.</p>

<p>Don't worry. You and your child will find your way - your own way - and that is why homeschooling is such a blessing. I wouldn't trade these high school years for anything - we've had a blast!</p>

19

<p>Dear anotherparent,
In regard to your son being rejected by UCSC--I'm not at all surprised. A year ago, my daughter and I toured UCSC. She was interested as they have a strong biology department, with an emphasis on marine biology/animals. We spent nearly half an hour with an admissions dean who was <em>very</em> anti-homeschooling. When my daughter mentioned taking AP Psychology on-line, he told her what a bad idea that is, and about how much she was missing out on, in terms of interaction with classmates; she tried to explain that the class was very interactive, via on-line forums and so on, but he really didn't want to listen. It went on like that, as they discussed her various classes, with him dissing homeschoolers' "kitchen table chemistry" (that her chem labs are designed and supervised by a Stanford PhD and are quite rigorous didn't cut any ice with him). It was a little disconcerting when I heard that same term ("kitchen table chemistry") applied to homeschoolers' science by a LAC admissions dean on the other coast a couple months later....</p>

<p>We've had great responses to the fact that we homeschool from all the other admissions offices we've dealt with so far; these two were the exceptions.</p>

20

<p>When my son and I were visiting college's last year we only heard one anti-homeschooling dig, and curiously it came from a coach at Emory. He had said something about the importance of AP classes in high school or some such thing, and my son said he was a homeschooler and had done an AP class, but ... and he was starting to explain how he'd chosen to take classes at the local college as an alternative to APs, but before he could even get into that --right after the coach heard the word "homeschooler"-- he tossed off, "Well, you never know with homeschooling because then <em>everything</em> is an AP class."</p>

<p>It was like this snide comment that... what?... homeschoolers lie about the rigor of their studies?</p>

<p>In the interview (I was there but not speaking, letting my son have this conversation), my son let the comment slide. In fact, in the moment he didn't really stop to think what exactly it was supposed to mean and just went on telling the coach about himself. By the end of the interview the coach was being very friendly and said he'd be interested in my son being on the team, but I left with a bad taste and reservations.</p>

<p>Not so much because the guy was skeptical of homeschooling, but that he would be so rude as to snipe like that with a kid who is a homeschooler sitting right in front of him.</p>

<p>Anyway, S didn't end up applying there after all was said and done, but not because of that.</p>