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Why, oh WHY would you submit willingly to the torture of standardized tests? Well… money, for one thing!
Kim asked me on Facebook, “Is there any point in a senior taking the ACT again in December? Applications and transcripts will already be turned in by the time we get the results.”
Kim, yes, there is a point to this madness! I encourage you to have your child take it again IF you think they can get a better score. Some scholarships are tied to ACT or SAT scores, and increasing the score can significantly increase financial aid at some colleges.
Be my friend on facebook! I’d love to answer quick questions for you! And sometimes, on “good hair days” I even answer on video! Please click LIKE on my Facebook Page
Do you have more questions about high school tests? I have resources available to help.
Different colleges ask for different information from homeschoolers. It can be difficult to determine what extra information they may require from you.
The only way to find out is to check their website and also speak to them in person. Some colleges will have one policy posted, but admission personnel require more or less than the posted policy. Other colleges won’t have a policy posted on their website, but the admission personnel will know the details (or know that nothing specific is required.)
The easiest way to get your answer is to go to a college fair where multiple colleges are located. Have your child speak to each college first, and be forthright about the information they need as a student. Let them finish speaking, and getting all of their questions answered, while you stay in the background. Once the child is done talking, then it’s your turn. Ask an open-ended question, “We are a homeschool family. What information would you like from your homeschooled applicants?”
You can also call and speak to them directly, by telephone. Remember, your job as the school administrator is to talk about high school records, so this is a normal, natural function of your job. Try to avoid the topics that are your child’s responsibility. You want to demonstrate that your child is an independent young adult that doesn’t require a parent in order to communicate clearly.
See those cute buttons at the bottom of these blog posts? Those are there to help you share helpful posts with others who might need encouragement. Go ahead and give it a try. I promise that nothing will blow up!
What about using CLEP in high school? Wendy asked these questions after she read my blog post about Capturing CLEP Credit on a Homeschool Transcript:
If a college doesn’t accept CLEP courses as fulfillment of a college class, will they recognize it as fulfillment of the high school course?
And will this make the student’s college application more competitive?
Will organizations like National Homeschool Honor Society and other “honor” societies make a student’s college application more competitive?
Dear Wendy,
Colleges each have their own policy about CLEP and other things. The best answer is to find out what YOUR colleges want, and then GIVE them what they want to the best of your ability. However, CLEP is outside documentation of your homeschool, just like AP, SAT Subject Tests, SAT and ACT provide outside documentation. Using CLEP as a way to document what they learn will provide additional weight to your transcript. That doesn’t mean a college will necessarily prefer your student over another, however. When you are homeschooling independently, you can teach a class in your own way. You can evaluate in your own way. If you teach the content of a CLEP exam, and then evaluate the success of your class with a CLEP exam, it will certainly not be any LESS recognized as a homeschool class. Instead, the outside documentation of the test can demonstrate that your child knows the material.
If you are applying to very competitive schools, find out what they want and give it to them. Our first choice schools accepted CLEP, so we used that for our outside documentation. Some other schools we applied to did not recognize CLEP in their admission policy, but it did improve their position for admission.
If you have a high school student who has taken the PSAT or SAT or ACT, you may get some offers to join an honor society. Some are legitimate and some are not. Try to determine if the honor society is tied to some sort of actual “honor” like GPA or SAT scores. Then look to see if it is a money-making organization or a charitable organization offering the award. A legitimate honor society may make a college application more competitive, but not necessarily any more than the GPA and SAT score required to receive the award.
Learn the SECRET to getting your student placed at the TOP of the stack for college admission consideration as well as one of those MASSIVE university scholarships. Get the Comprehensive Record Solution!
Senior Year Last-minute 12-Step Emergency Panic Plan
Hopelessly Behind?
“Second best” success is also possible. If you don’t have a clue about college admissions, and you are in the midst of senior year, it’s very difficult to quickly regroup in order to experience success. I have an emergency plan for families who haven’t started preparing for the admission process prior to senior year. Here is a quick checklist just for those panicky parents.
Drop all school and activities and work on college applications
The best success comes to parents who plan ahead. What does that mean exactly? It means parents with elementary students who “listen in” when others talk about high school. It means middle school parents who learn how to homeschool high school BEFORE panic starts. It means taking challenging classes each year, just in case one year you can’t get everything done. It means seizing junior year tasks with gusto. But you know what? Everything can still be OK even if you haven’t done those things in the past. All you need to do is hit the ground running on the first day of senior year.
Remember the Boy Scout Motto? Always be prepared! Be prepared because teenagers do change their minds. They may go back and forth between, “I’m going to college,” and “I’m never going to college. What a stupid idea!” Plan ahead as much as possible. If your situation changes (either for better or for worse) you’ll be prepared! Avoid fear that immobilizes you. Spend some time learning about homeschooling high school so you can feel confident in your abilities.
When you are applying for colleges, you will need a great homeschool transcript. The good news is you can “do-it-yourself” and save thousands. Discover the Total Transcript Solution.
I hope that all these resources can help you. If you are looking for even more, I am now a featured expert on Bizymoms.com! You can read my articles here.
You know why it’s important to visit colleges? So you can learn more about the college and they can learn more about the student. While visiting, make sure your student is actively engaged in the visit. I often say that students need to “look them in the eye and give a firm handshake.” But being present is MORE than a handshake. Karen didn’t want me to identify her school, but she has allowed me to share this story about students visiting her college.
I teach at a large university, but within our university are many nooks and corners where a student can find ample individual attention. My classes are small seminars, rarely exceeding 15 students, and often as small as 8 or 9. Recently I received a request to host a visiting prospective student in my 2-5 PM class. As always, I sent her a friendly email with PDF files of all of the materials she would need to read to prepare for the class, plus directions for how to get to the classroom, and all of my contact information. She did not respond to my email.
She did not greet me, but rather took a seat at the table and waved– I introduced her to the class. During the class, she did not participate. She often looked up, but for about a third of the time she was texting vigorously under the table. My regular students know that this is NOT acceptable behavior. It’s a 3-hour class; she left at the break, saying she had a flight to catch. When the department contacted me, of course I mentioned her behavior. My contact relayed a story in which a prospective student, in the middle of an interview with the chair, took a phone call and even held up her hand for him to be quiet while she made her social plans.
If that student had an interest in being accepted to our school she would have 1) responded to my email rather than leaving me wondering if she was going to show up. 2) read the material and tried to appear engaged in class, and 3) kept her phone in her pocket. She should have also told me that she was going to leave early. And she should have thanked me, at least by email. Not because I like to collect thank-you notes but because all of this goes towards my impression of her level of interest in our school and her general intelligence and character. She may have believed that she was there to observe us, to see if we were good enough for her, but the observation goes in both direction.
~ Karen
Visiting a college is like a job interview. Young adults have to be present, presentable, engaged, and engaging.
Another great way to impress colleges is to have a great transcript. Let me help you make a great one.
You can give high school credit for students who earn college credits, regardless of how old the student may be. Of course, when I tell that to parents, half of them laugh and think, ‘MY child getting college credits in high school? HA!” I know it’s easy to be skeptical – I remember thinking that way myself! But when kids really start to learn a subject they love, it’s completely possible to reach college credits through using CLEP tests. Recently Elise wrote to share her successes with CLEP. Her 10th grader learned World History in a way that he enjoyed, and it made sense to him. He was able to take and pass a CLEP exam in that subject. Now he is a 10th grader with some college credits under his belt! Here is the sweet note from Elise:
Hi, Lee!
I’m so excited, I just had to let you know that, thanks in part to you, my son (10th grader) passed the Western Civ I CLEP today! First, you assured me in one of your free calls, that Sonlight’s Core 6 (World History part 1) would be fine to do with my 2 when they were in 7th and 9th with some Teaching Co. DVDs (which is something we enjoyed doing vs switching to a “High School level” course that he’d have to do alone). Then, throughreading your book, watching your DVD, and reading your blog about all the advantages of the CLEP, I decided to try having my son take the CLEP when we were done. He used a CLEP study book and a little InstaCert and got a 63 when 50 is passing and 56 qualified him for credit at the college he’s thinking of going to! Like you said, he’s saving thousands of dollars by clepping out of that course, validating our homeschool grades, and I think I can count that World History course as honors, if I’m not mistaken. Regardless, I’m ecstatic, and thank you so much for all you do! I wanted you to put it on your blog so others could hear how much you help!
Gratefully,
Elise
Don’t think it will never happen to you. Be open to the possibility and it may happen for you, too! And yes, Elise, if it were me I would give him a class called “Honors” for his history class. Great job!
The HomeScholar’s Total Transcript Solution will take the fear out of homeschool transcripts!
I used Latin Road for 3 years. My boys were RATHER successful with it, not to mention my son still remembers all of his Latin even after three years without cracking a book! He was required to take a college placement test at the college he’s attending, so they could find out which course would be applicable for him. He passed all 3 levels of Latin, and began the university in Junior level! Yippee! He liked Latin Road so much that he has continued his Latin studies in college.
Latin Road applies quite a lot of memorization, rote learning, flash cards, and practice, practice, practice. It needed just as much time as a math program, not to mention we were required to undertake some Latin translating every single day, just as you complete math problems every single day. It seemed to be highly mom demanding, as you say. I used to dedicate approximately two hours on weekends getting my own lessons finished, ın order that I could understand the best way to teach it the next week. Her lessons are clearly arranged, as well as I in no way had any sort of difficulties knowing what to undertake on a daily basis. It ended up being QUITE obvious, as well as each lesson was around the equal amount of time of time to accomplish, and each lesson was very clearly marked.
Again, almost like a math book, I think! It was developed for homeschoolers, so that’s part of why it was so straightforward to use. Each day we would do some flash cards, recite some memorized lesson or maybe read aloud, and also do some copy work or translating. It was a LARGE AMOUNT of work, and challenging, however my boys truly seemed to like it, and it certainly paid off in the end.
Hope that helps!
Read to what others are saying about The HomeScholar Gold Care Club!
Catherine asks: How important is it to have a typical looking transcript with grades and a GPA vs a more narrative type of transcript or even one with courses listed but no grades, since our goal is mastery and so they’d all just be A’s anyway?
Hi Catherine,
Perhaps you might attempt to think about this a little differently. Imagine yourself being a foreign language translator. Your job is to translate what you have completed in your homeschool, into words and numbers that colleges understand. Your job isn’t to alter your homeschool – simply do what gets results for you. Your job is only to translate your activities (whatever they are) into the “love language” of colleges.
I know that many colleges don’t mind a narrative description of a homeschool. I went to a Christian college fair last Monday, and there were a variety of colleges in which 15-20% of their student body were homeschooled. Those admissions people discussed narrative records in a very nice and receptive way. This weekend I’m going to a Homeschool College Fair, and I’m certain it is going to be equally welcoming to many types of homeschool records (or else they probably wouldn’t be at a fair just for homeschoolers, right? ) However I think the vast majority of colleges might not appreciate anything besides a transcript due to the fact it will look like a foreign language to them.
You may desire to simply cluster your student’s learning experiences together into groupings that are about 1 credit worth. Name it something that seems similar to a class title. Once he has put in a year’s worth of math work, for instance, you may name it “discrete math” or “concepts in math” or something. You might look at CLEP exams, and see which ones seem similar to academic content that your student has mastered, and record those subject details on your transcript. Have you looked at Barb Shelton’s Homeschool Form-U-La book? Her book isn’t for everyone, but she gives you a good description of the best way to take what you have done and describing it in college-friendly language.
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