<p>Rising homeschooled senior here. As the title says, I'm a bit nervous about, well, my entire high school schedule, I suppose. For my freshman and sophomore years, I was positive I was going to go to a local, small university that was super easy to get into, so I didn't worry about AP's or anything like that. Heck, I didn't even know what AP's were. (Now I had taken a few classes online, so not everything is a "mommy grade." But they weren't AP level.) End of sophomore year, though, I started looking at more selective schools, and I decided on taking a couple college courses and self-studying for AP tests for the rest of my classes, about five of them. Come January/February, we call up the public school where I had taken the ACT/SAT before and asked if I could take the AP tests there. The lady on the other end took my info, told us she'd put my name down, and said they'd call back if they needed anymore information. Early April rolls around and the school calls and informs us that I am not allowed to take the AP test at their school and that it is too late to sign up at any other school.
So basically I was screwed and don't have AP scores to prove my transcript, and now only have three college courses and regular classes for my first three homeschool years. No way am I trying for AP again; instead, I'm enrolling full-time dual enrollment at a private university. (It's an hour long commute, so it really cuts into my time, but it's the best my parents could afford.) My schedule for my senior year first semester is as follows:
Calc II
Intermediate Arabic
World History
English Composition
University Physics & Lab
These are all the highest courses you can test out of at the college. (Note it's not a community college.) It's 17 credit hours of work.
Do you think that this might help even out the rest of my transcript? Being homeschooled, it's a lot harder to prove that you really are capable of doing college-level work. Having the 5 AP's would have really helped, and now I'm afraid that it's going to hurt my chances.
BTW, I'm applying to MIT, Penn, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Indiana University, and Purdue.
Thanks for reading my autobiography. Come to my book signing at the local Barne's and Noble. (No really, thanks for reading that jumbled mess.)</p>
<p>It’s not going to hurt you to bad. Calc 2 is impressive and Arabic is like the most undertaken language other than Mandarin ypu should be fine for some of those schools not ivy leauge. Good luck. </p>
<p>Dual enrollment courses are equally impressive if not more so than APs. It’s actualy college level work. And I think colleges understand that in homeschooling things work a little bit differently.</p>
<p>Do well in your dual-enrollment classes this fall. If you can get first-quarter transcripts sent, do so, espeically if you’re sending in your applications earlier than the deadline. And make sure you get midyear transcripts sent ASAP. Colleges want to see APs because they want proof that you can handle rigorous college-level work. I think if you’ve been homeschooled and taken tough classes, and then show you can succeed in your DE classes, that should be enough. Note that some schools do read applications more holistically than others. I know that Mount Holyoke, for example, reads each app very carefully and takes special circumstances like yours into consideration. I am not sure that’s the same at much larger universities. I don’t have personal experience with those, but my sense is they tend to be a bit more “by the numbers”.</p>
<p>Also, what are your SAT scores? Have you taken any SAT subject tests? Scoring very well on those will also go a long way towards alleviating any concerns about your non-AP homeschool curriculum, I think.</p>