Hello, everyone.
I’m working on applying to a bunch of summer programs and I’m beginning to realize how frustrating it is to create portfolios. I’ve obviously been documenting my homeschooled experiences, but I’m struggling to wrap my head around what I should and shouldn’t include in these things. What do you guys/gals generally do?
Right now, I’m thinking of tackling it in sections. List each third-party course I’ve taken and including the official course description, my grades in both semesters, and the texts that I used. I’d organize these by year, and then at the end of each set of courses I’d include one to two samples of the work that I actually completed. This would probably be like…lab work from a science course, and an essay from another course. I’d include official grade transcripts to show that I’m not lying, as well as AP test scores to go along with the AP classes that I took.
I think that that’s pretty standard stuff to include. Essential, if you will. However, I’m having trouble deciding whether or not I should also dedicate a couple of pages to talk about the volunteering/work/extracurriculars I’ve been doing. I think that that out-of-classroom experiences kind of define the homeschool experience, but I’m not sure if people care about that kind of thing. I’ve put in hundreds of hours volunteering over the last three years, and I’ve worked several different (more impressive) jobs.
I feel like including those sorts of things may take the emphasis off of academia and place it more on personal stuff, and I’m worried that it may dilute my application. So, what do you think? Should it just be all academics, no nonsense, or should I also talk about some of my more personal experiences?
Also, slightly less involved question: Do you write your portfolios in first or third person? I have a friend who writes his portfolios and resumes in first person, and that just seems really strange to me.