<p>Would home schooling my D be hindering her chances to be accepted at a highly competitive preppy high school?</p>
<p>Only 21% of applicants are accepted. </p>
<p>D is good. Just wondering about prejudice and stereotypes against home schooled kids (by administration, admissions, etc.) within the US or abroad?</p>
<p>I have met a couple of really interesting home schooled kids at Choate. The ones that I met had exceptional talent in one area, like music and probably had to test really well. I know that the testing criteria is true for kids who are homeschooled in high school and are applying to college.</p>
<p>I homeschooled my d for 6th-8th grade. She attended public high school for 1 year, worst than she thought. She was accepted in 5 schools. She is loving BS.</p>
<p>I created a portfolio explaining what she did, books we used and standardized test scores since 3 grade. I also gave information on why I made that educational choice.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the school, but most are more open to homeschooled students than you’d think. You need external verification–a class taken outside the home, coaches of sports teams or ec’s etc. to validate your evaluation of your child, along with good test scores.</p>
<p>My older D was home educated through grade 9. Grades 10-11 she was half time home educated, half time public school. Grade 12 was completely public school. She graduated 6th in her class.</p>
<p>She was accepted to and attended Colgate.</p>
<p>My dd went to school for the first time this year, to SPS. During the application process, we found nearly all the admissions folks we met open to homeschooling. We looked at about a dozen New England schools.</p>
<p>My son had a classmate at NMH who was homeschooled for grades 1-8. He went to Dartmouth after NMH. We also know two other homeschooling families, one is a woman with seven children. Her older two are in college, one at West Point. Another family has twelve! children, all homeschooled, three at Ivy League colleges. (These families homeschooled right through 12th grade). I know you were asking about entrance to boarding schools, but I think entrance to an Ivy is pretty good supporting evidence that with a strong home-school curriculum and the right environment, a child can be quite successful!</p>
<p>I really appreciate your insightful information about home schooling and prepy schools. Thank you all!</p>
<p>BayStateResident That is exactly our case. D is gifted in the Arts and Music. She got a scholarship for the Academy of Art in Florence for this coming Summer. All on her own. Certainly, for next year, homeschooling seems to be the option for her to access classes in her field at her level of expertise.</p>
<p>Alexz825Mom. The portfolio idea is just perfect for her visual arts achievement. She asked us to make a web page for her work. I just have to figure out how to do that!</p>
<p>ClassicalMama. We especially appreciated the advise on taking classes outside of the home, and ec´s. After your suggestion, I googled and found about part-time enrollment in some of the schools in our region. Very helpful!</p>
<p>All advice greatly appreciated. We are completely new to the idea of home schooling, and we are humbled by the wealth of information that you all have provided. Thank you again.</p>
<p>Homeschooling hasn’t held my kids back. One is in Exeter after homeschooling K-8, the other is at U-Penn after homeschooling K-12. PM me if you want more specific details.</p>
<p>Good advice. Because the anecdotal information suggests that your experiences with your children are not the national norm. And that many homeschool children are falling short (here in my city it’s abysmal and motivated primarily by religious differences). </p>
<p>So ability to document that your child can do the work AND adjust to living with a diverse population of students is key. And that their experiences surpassed their PS peers.</p>
<p>Otherwise, there is no real prejudice against homeschooled children at BS or at major colleges. Some exceptional students are matriculating quite well.</p>
<p>Anecdotal information is quite often anti-homeschooling. </p>
<p>However, there’s not good evidence to support it. Homeschoolers consistently score well above average on standardized tests, and a look at a discussion board such as Well Trained Mind’s or the homeschooler’s high school to college yahoo discussion group would show anyone skeptical of homeschooling how dedicated and successful the vast majority of homeschoolers are, including those who homeschool primarily for religious reasons. The anecdotal evidence I might gather–based on the homeschoolers at the community college where I teach–would suggest that homeschooled students (most conservative Christians) do as well or better than the other students in the class–many of whom are two years older than they are. </p>
<p>In my many years of homeschooling, I met only one family doing an abysmal job of homeschooling–and even then, I guess I’d call it more mediocre than abysmal–workbook-based learning. I knew many who were using science materials that in my opinion was paranoid and just plain silly when it came to evolution–but the books were often otherwise sound, and no long lasting harm seems to be done to the kids–they get through biology at our college, for example, just fine. And I have to say that my now-public schooled children have had lots of silly curriculum thrown their way.</p>
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<p>LOL! 'Tis so true! I’d guess that they get about the same amount of dogma and misinformation in the public schools as the most hard-core fundamentalist homeschooler could throw their way?</p>
<p>The usual posters on CC are hardly average. This place has a definite Lake Wobegone feel to it.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean for that to be a stereotype about “all” homeschooled students. I’ve met several bright ones that were good contenders for MIT, for instance. And both of my sisters homeschooled at least one of their children for many of the reasons several of you did - gifted and no programs to nurture them.</p>
<p>Here in my city the homeschooled population performs worse than their public/private school peers. It’s interesting that in my profession I spend a lot of time in the educational system, am on a lot of library committees and also do a lot of college interviews and some college prep coaching. In some cases the decision is driven by a need for more religious separatism. In others, it’s a reaction to the dismal state of public schools. </p>
<p>The question was about “perception” at the BS and college level. The most proactive families are producing the brightest children. They’re taking online courses, on discussion boards, and interacting with each other. So like this discussion board, that subset is self-selecting. But there’s also a huge subset of children who are falling through the cracks and no checks and balances to provide support when that happens. There is also a high incidence of economic pressure - so the parents aren’t accessing some of the amazing resources talked about here. I’ve been called in by several local libraries to do workshops for some of the nearby associations and I’m seeing a lot of middle and high school students still writing and reading at an elementary level. In our state there are few requirements so many of the students are not testing as a benchmark.</p>
<p>Hence, in response to the OP question my answer was to say - yes - from an admissions standpoint there may be a perception problem. For every qualified student that applies, there are many who are not. Not much different then what traditionally school students face, I think. </p>
<p>However, that is changing as more qualified applicants come forward. The onus is on the student to prove their preparation was as good or better than the competition. </p>
<p>Perhaps those who are homeschooled AND high scoring have a strategic advantage during admissions. They’re efforts represent a certain amount of proactiveness that isn’t nurtured if you’re in a public or private school where the subjects are “force fed.” Homeschooled students that are successful also seemed to have another common trait - they were free to pursue at a higher level - those subjects that fascinated them and were unconstrained by AYP and arbitrary district accreditation issues. </p>
<p>In admissions the key is to be well prepared and well rounded. To show you have the “right stuff” in all the right ways. Which may be why those of you on these boards have been successful in placing your children. Because you, as parents, were also a cut above.</p>
<p>I agree with most of your thoughtful post Exie.</p>
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<p>I haven’t seen a lot of this–as I mentioned earlier, the homeschoolers in my neck of the woods are, by and large, a dedicated bunch. The few kids with this kind of low writing and reading skill have, by and large, fairly serious disabilities–and the parents are usually providing much more than they’d be getting in school. </p>
<p>On the other hand, you may be seeing some die-hard unschoolers, who think kids will learn to read when they’re ready and shouldn’t be pushed. I vehemently disagree with their philosophy, and in my opinion, they’re doing their children no favor by not teaching them to read by age 7 or 8–but even then, I know many of those parents spend hours focusing on reading aloud, experiential learning, etc. Yes, we all hear those nightmare stories of the earnest parent who has one unschooled child happily exploring her passion for Shakespeare, while the other plays World of Warcraft 12 hours a day, learning to read at age 12 from computer game magazines. Definitely not my way of thinking or doing things…but when I see in my college classes kids who have graduated from high school and proudly claim that they haven’t read a book since 3rd grade, I’m hard pressed to see much difference. </p>
<p>At any rate, I suspect that most of the homeschooled kids who apply to boarding school tend to come from homes where academics are taken very seriously. Homeschooling and boarding school are, in some ways, polar opposites–you don’t homeschool for long if you don’t really love having your kids around ALL the time, and it’s very hard to send them away to school. For that reason alone, I’m guessing that most of the homeschool to boarding school parents place a priority on academic rigor, and that boarding schools recognize that.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, you’re absolutely correct that the onus is on the parent to prove the academic qualifications of a homeschooled student. Test scores, outside recommendations and externally verified achievements carry a lot of weight. And preparing that application is a LOT of work: I had to write math, English, and parent recommendations, doing my best to wear each hat differently;created a traditional-looking transcript; and wrote a detailed, many-paged school report, which I thought was overboard, but all of the schools said was appropriate. I was more exhausted than my kid on January 15!</p>