How colleges view home schooling is a question many of us face. I thought you may want some information directly from them. These are words I got from representatives of some distinguished Universities in US. I appreciate and would like to thank each University for giving us their advice.
These are their words:
School: Washington
University in St. Louis
Representative: Nanette
H. Tarbouni (Director of Admissions)
Contact: (800) 638-0700 OR (314) 935-4615
(direct)
At Washington University, we welcome applications from students who
have
been home schooled. We work with each student individually
and as is true
with all our applicants, we value the individual differences,
talents,
contributions and passions that prospective students may bring
with them
when they join the Washington University community.
An SAT or ACT is required, as is also true for all applicants,
but we do
not require SAT IIs. Some of our home schooled applicants
do take SAT IIs,
to present more standardized information in their application,
but it is
not required.
We recommend a recommendation from someone who knows the applicant
well and
is outside the home - since the family functions as both "counselor"
and
"teacher". This community recommendation is an opportunity
to have an
external perspective added to their materials.
Air Force Academy (See: http://www.usafa.af.mil/rr/hs.htm)
Home-schooled students make up a small but increasing number of applicants for admission to the Air Force Academy. In that regard, we offer the following guidelines to assist in preparing and competing for an appointment. Home-schooled students should try to request an application during the spring of the year before they wish to enter the Academy (i.e. your Junior year). Home-schooled students should contact the Admissions Office as early as possible after submitting an application for counsel if necessary.
You can request an application or get more information about the USAF Academy by filling out our on-line request form or if you prefer, mailing a request to:
HQ USAFA/RRS
2304 Cadet Drive, Suite 200
USAF Academy, CO 80840
Stanford University (see http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/criteria/home_schooling.html)
During the last few years we have seen a steady increase in applications from families who are home schooling their children. Although they are still a small minority in our applicant pool, such students are no longer a rarity; several are admitted and enroll at Stanford each year. We try to be scrupulously fair in evaluating these applicants, and make sure that they are not at a disadvantage in the admission process. At the same time, these applicants present us with some special challenges; what follows suggests how home-schooled students might best address the issues when they apply.
We do not have a required curriculum or set of courses for applicants to Stanford. We make general recommendations ... [and] It will be to the home-schooled applicant's advantage if the home curriculum approximates or exceeds these recommendations. Primarily, we want students to demonstrate that they have successfully undertaken a serious, rigorous course of study. They should provide a detailed description of their curriculum when they apply, but it is not necessary to follow a prescribed or approved home-schooling program. The central issue for us is the manner in which the student has gone about the learning process, not how many hurdles he or she has jumped.
An obvious difficulty home-schooled students face in the admission process is the lack of a conventional high school transcript. There is actually not a great deal of difference between someone with no formal grades or transcript and someone with excellent grades from a small, rural high school from which we have seen no other applicants. Grades are more meaningful when they help us distinguish between students in large high schools where there are known standards ...
We look for a clear sense of intellectual growth and a quest for knowledge in our applicants. What is their level of intellectual vitality? How have they sustained their curiosity? Home-schooled students may have a potential advantage in this aspect of the application, since they have consciously chosen and pursued an independent course of study. In particular, we would like to hear in the written application about how the family chose home schooling, how the learning was organized, what benefits accrued, and what the experience cost in terms of lost opportunities.
Overall, the home-schooled student's writing about his or her educational experience can play an even more central role in the application than it would for a conventional high school student. This kind of self-inquiry may be difficult for some students, because our society tends to discourage reflection about intellectual questions as opposed to vocational goals. Nevertheless, we strongly encourage an effort to analyze the experience, as much for the educational benefit of taking stock of oneself as for making a mark in the admission process. ...
With little other quantitative information available, home-schooled students' standardized test scores (SAT, ACT) take on more significance than they might for other applicants. Normally, test scores are factored in along with grades, rank in class, and a judgment of the quality of the school and the student's academic program; they are never decisive by themselves. We require the SAT I or the ACT, but only recommend the SAT II subject tests. It is even more important for home-schooled students to take the subject tests in order to provide some measure of relative achievement.
Recommendations raise other issues. Typically, we require three recommendations: two from teachers of the student's choice and one from a guidance counselor or other school official. The parents of a home-schooled applicant can write one recommendation in place of all three. While this recommendation is helpful in conveying in detail the context of the student's educational experience, it also lacks one crucial element: the objectivity brought by a conventional teacher able to compare the child with other students he or she may have taught. We do not expect parents to make such a comparison (all parents are naturally proud of their own children), but we do have to compare these applicants to thousands of others for whom we have an objective view. Teachers and guidance counselors can be biased, too, and this is why we ask for three letters, in the hope that each will independently verify and reinforce the others. If a student is able to take a community college course or two during the high school years or has a tutor outside the family as part of the home-schooling program, those teachers can write additional teacher recommendations and provide some non-parental evaluation. Anything a home-schooled student can do to support the application with standard credentials helps to reduce any lingering uneasiness we might have about admitting a student lacking recent formal educational experience.
Sometimes home-schooled students worry about the difficulty of demonstrating the high level of social involvement normally displayed in extracurricular activities. They usually do not have team sports, student government, a band, a newspaper, or an honor society to provide opportunities for non-academic development. This may be less of an obstacle than one might fear. We regularly see applications from students whose main focus of non-academic activity is outside of the school setting. They may be involved in community service, religious life, drama, sports, local politics, or work, participating with a dedication and energy that we find very attractive and easily comparable to conventional high school activities. We do not care which activities students chose; we just hope that they will make full use of opportunities to contribute to their personal growth and sense of community. ...
times since 6/22/00