<p>Do you have a better term to suggest? I'm not trying to be difficult; it is something I have struggled with as well. I've tried "independent study" or "home study," but people are even more confused by that.</p>
<p>Just to put my 2 cents in... I am a homeschooler in my senior year of high school. For 11 years, I have done nothing but courses at home. I was accepted into a dual enrollment program at my local community college on my self-accredited GPA (3.94/4.0) and SAT scores (1460/2140). My first-choice college, Oklahoma U., has also accepted me on these credentials along with National Merit Semifinalist standing. They did have different processes for homeschoolers, but all you had to do was meet 3 out of 4 criterion instead of 2 out of 4. It was no big deal and I got my acceptance letter late last month. They didn't have a problem with a parent-generated transcript that said "homeschool" on it... we even centered and bolded it across the top of the page!</p>
<p>Forgive my ranting, homeschooling is near and dear to my heart.</p>
<p>DianeR - no, I don't have a better term. And it might be too late to try to change anyway. It's one of those things like "buffalo wings" or even "bathroom"- it's perfectly obvious what the term means except that it may mean something else.</p>
<p>trvsdrlng - congratulations on getting into your first choice school! Homeschooling is near and dear to my heart also. I'm not contending that schools would have a "problem" with parent generated grades that they would communicate to applicants, merely that selective schools probably ignore them. CC in particular tend not to be very selective and will accept people who pass a standardized test, even if they have very bad grades or dropped out of high school failing. It is very likely that your SAT scores and Nat'l Merit standing would have gotten you into your local CC and into Okla U even if you had submitted a transcript with no parent generated grades at all.</p>
<p>trvsdrlng</p>
<p>You call that a rant? Heck, I see I need to give you ranting lessons :)</p>
<p>Seriously, congratulations. I'm glad everything worked out well for you.</p>
<p>Has anyone here had any experience with Clonlara? I am a Clonlara "graduate" and I am thinking about listing it as my high school. The only problem is that I am applying to University of Michigan, which is in Ann Arbor along with Clonlara. Will they see through the umbrella school and require me to take more SAT IIs?</p>
<p>Well, we are in the same boat. S is going to apply and see what happens. He's hoping his CC classes, recommendations, SAT scores and extracurriculars will be enough to get admitted. I do think they will know Clonlara and his transcript is coming from them. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>In general, the requirement for extra SAT IIs is based on the idea that the university isn't sure how "good" a homeschool program is, whereas it has a pretty good idea how various public and private high schools stack up academically.</p>
<p>For the record, I was homeschooled and I got into Caltech, Harvey Mudd and UCLA...take heart, hard work pays off.</p>
<p>unless you want officials to audit each homeschool, i say take the couple sat iis. it's no big deal. stop griping and get studying.</p>
<p>Have to agree with that.</p>
<p>
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From my experience, requiring SAT subject tests is the exception. My son is applying for music programs and we have looked at tons of schools. The only ones I've found that require them are Northwestern and Michigan.
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</p>
<p>It depends on the level of schools you're looking at; elite schools like Caltech and MIT <em>do</em> always require SAT IIs.</p>
<p>A few extra SAT IIs doesn't seem too onerous since colleges lack the information they get from a more or less standardized grading process at high schools. They can probably say with some precision what a 3.7 GPA represents at a prep school that sends them many applicants each year, and even in less familiar schools, knowing that a student is #3 out of 237 with a 3.92 GPA tells them something useful.</p>
<p>I do agree that it would be better if they had multiple ways of getting comparative data, e.g., AP tests, college classes, etc. The simplest way to do this might be something like saying, "The requirement for two additional SAT IIs may be waived if sufficient external documentation of academic performance is available; to request such a waiver, please send us documentation by..."</p>
<p>Of course, that would add another layer of administrative processing to the whole thing. I think one reason some schools may do the SAT II requirement is that it's simple and easy to interpret. They'd probably require 5 SAT IIs for ALL applicants if they thought they could. :)</p>
<p>I have read most of the responses to this original posting and I (bravely) offer an opposing view to most of the other responses. I am a high school teacher in a specialty area. I have often taught home-schoolers who come into school for one or two specialty classes each day. I have also taught many home schoolers privately in the area of acting. </p>
<p>I am not against home schooling if the parent are able to provide their child with a truly competent education. However, I have seen too many examples of this not being the case to come down on a college for requiring a candidate to show proof of their abilities and past learning. </p>
<p>I have OFTEN noticed that some of these students are lacking tremendously in certain areas. Many of them have trouble writing. I remember once assigning a simple five-paragraph essay (with full explanation as to what that was) to a pair of home schooled kids. They simply were not able to construct even a paragraph. These were sophomores in high school! When I asked them what they do during school times at home, they told me that they did lots of Algebra - they love algebra. They said they didn't read much or write at all. I asked how many papers they had written in the past year and they looked at me with blank stares. I knew one junior who planned to major in science in college - yet he had never done a single lab experiment. I have seen this several times in varying areas to varying degrees. I do not think the colleges are trying to penalize home-schooled students. They just want sufficient proof that they have been prepared adequately. </p>
<p>I think that if done well (which I'm sure most of you do), home schooling can be wonderful for the student. However, they will not be "home schooled" at college. I'm sure that the requirements by these colleges are based on previous experience and are not arbitrarily prejudiced against home schooled kids. These colleges need to know that these young people can handle the intense academic requirements of their schools. If they can't, isn't it better to know that before entering the pressurized college arena?</p>
<p>I think home schooling has many benefits to a family - time flexibility being the most obvious. You can work Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can have class on Thursday after dinner. You can head to the city any day and take in a museum. You can go on vacation anytime you choose to! If the price you have to pay for 10 years or so of time-flexibility is to take five tests at the end, it seems a fair price to pay to me. </p>
<p>No intention to offend - that's just my opinion.</p>
<p>I agree that a college should require candidates (ALL candidates) to show proof of their abilities and past learning. That's what the admission process is for. Testing is an awfully imprecise and uncreative way to do so, however. Offering testing as an option to candidates who don't want to submit portfolios of their work (including essays and lab reports, thus demonstrating that they do know how to do these things) would be great. Requiring it regardless of what other steps a candidate takes to demonstrate their abilities, regardless of its actual motivations, looks to me like evidence that the staff just don't have enough time to read portfolios, which if true is sad.</p>
<p>Also, ericactor seem to imply that the burden of taking five tests is that it takes a lot of time. I suppose this is a burden, but not the most important one. I attend a selective liberal arts college. The vast majority of my friends here with whom I've discussed this issue agree that it simply wouldn't have been possible for them to do well on several SAT II tests or the like. Many took AP tests in order to receive college credit for high school work, but few took more than two or three. SAT subject tests are designed to test for depth of knowledge in specific areas. Much like subject GREs, they are only offered for languages, English literature, U.S. and world history, math, and natural sciences. Requiring several of them seems to me like a rather biased misuse, just as it would be for GREs: these tests aren't designed to tell colleges whether you can write well or work in a lab; indeed, I think if taken seriously they would probably make it more likely that, for instance, science students wouldn't have lab experience, not less.</p>
<p>I'm also a writing tutor for my fellow undergraduate college students, and have worked with many students who attended public and private schools and still don't have quite the right intuition for paragraph construction. I'd be more concerned about how well homeschoolers learn writing if I thought institutional schools were teaching it competently, but given the number of smart, well-educated students I've met who still have trouble with these things, I think it's a problem across the board in American education.</p>
<p>I don't think there's any reason for this to be a debate about whether homeschoolers are prepared for college. Some are and some aren't, just like everyone else. Rather, the question is how colleges should decide whether students are prepared, and testing is the wrong way.</p>
<p>I am in sympathy with the last post.
I have researched homeschooling, and happily, in those states that require testing of both schooled kids and homeschoolers, homeschoolers outscore schooled kids, usually by a wide margin.
As to SAT Subject tests, these have been my first two kids best friends. However, I think that tests of 800, 790, and 780 look much better (no matter what the merit), than 800, 790, 780, 710, 690. Extra tests for homeschoolers, in my opinion, do not help homeschoolers, and often in fact represent bias against them.
Please know that my first homeschooler graduated from Dartmouth in June and my second was admitted to Princeton today.</p>
<p>Kudos to you, danas, for putting into words what I was thinking but could not say. Congratulations to your son!</p>
<p>Thank you trvsdrlng!
My first was a son, this one is a daughter.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I have OFTEN noticed that some of these students are lacking tremendously in certain areas. Many of them have trouble writing. I remember once assigning a simple five-paragraph essay (with full explanation as to what that was) to a pair of home schooled kids. They simply were not able to construct even a paragraph. These were sophomores in high school!
[/quote]
I don’t think we can take this one experience and then use it to prove a general trend about homeschoolers, certainly nothing that would support testing requirements beyond those of public schoolers. It is not as if we don’t have many cases of public schoolers who don’t know how to write, and who don’t even love Algebra for that matter. I have seen plenty of public schoolers who really don’t have it together at all. And in many cases the teachers are just failing these kids. I have never seen this with private schoolers. Still, I would never rely upon my own observations here to suggest that colleges should lean more heavily on public schoolers than on private schoolers.</p>
<p>I should say, however, that I think the extra SAT II requirement is not ridiculous for the reason already mentioned here “A few extra SAT IIs doesn't seem too onerous since colleges lack the information they get from a more or less standardized grading process at high schools. They can probably say with some precision what a 3.7 GPA represents at a prep school that sends them many applicants each year, and even in less familiar schools, knowing that a student is #3 out of 237 with a 3.92 GPA tells them something useful.” For this reason we send in more SAT IIs than a school requires. But still, pound for pound, homeschooling seems to be doing more than holding its own when it comes to educating students. So I don't think any hard and fast extra requirements are warranted.</p>
<p>I'd probably encourage my kids to avoid schools that discrimminate like this because the additional requirements suggest a hostility to homeschoolers that may not be healthy.</p>
<p>Danas:</p>
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Please know that my first homeschooler graduated from Dartmouth in June and my second was admitted to Princeton today.
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Wow. Two heavy hitting schools there! My goodness. Are you feeling a little happy, or a lot? :)</p>
<p>My mistake, danas. I misread your post. 10 AM is too early for me. :)</p>
<p>Actually, the teacher has a very good point. Yes, many people do a very good job of homeschooling their children. But there are some that do not. While the average test scores may be higher, there is a vast range there - plenty of homeschoolers do not necessarily do so well, or they do well on the SAT I - because they drilled math and verbal - but their content knowledge in other areas is lacking. Without a standardized curriculum like there is in schools, the colleges can't be sure.</p>
<p>I was a teacher as well, and I have had experiences with students who had been homeschooled and now were attending public school (usually high school freshmen). There have been some that were better prepared than their peers, and some that were tremendously far behind. That's the point - there's little oversight in most states, so the knowledge has to be confirmed objectively. (For reference, I also homeschooled my son for awhile, so I understand both sides.)</p>
<p>A portfolio is nice, but how do you confirm that the student did the work? The reason they want tests is because it is measurable against other students and it is proctored. I see no problem with that.</p>
<p>Homeschooling families seem to want it all - little or no oversight, but no one's allowed to question their methods. And while I've seen most homeschooling families do a terrific job, I'd hate to see those same families get lumped together with the ones that don't do so well. The tests are a way to separate the whet from the chaff, so to speak.</p>
<p>Homeschoolers shouldn't feel as if they are being singled out. Those SAT II tests simply replace the gazilion standardized tests public school students take to establish the school is doing what they should be doing. I'm sure homeschoolers would far rather take a couple SAT IIs than state tests 6-10 times.</p>