Posted on 09/30/2006 3:33:01 AM PDT by deaconjim
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Bombarded by choices at a college job fair, Sara Kianmehr quickly found her match: Columbia College, a small, private school that didn't mind that her transcripts came from her parents.
The college "was the only institution that didn't have a puzzled look and say, 'Home school,' and ask me a million questions," the 19-year-old junior said. "There was a big appeal."
With colleges and universities aggressively competing for the best students, a growing number of institutions are actively courting homebound high achievers like Kianmehr, who took community college courses her senior year of high school and hopes to eventually study filmmaking at New York University or another top graduate school.
The courtship can be as subtle as admissions office Web sites geared to home-schooled applicants or, in the case of Columbia College, as direct as purchasing mailing lists and holding special recruiting sessions.
After years of skepticism, even mistrust, many college officials now realize it's in their best interest to seek out home-schoolers, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
"There was a tendency to kind of dismiss home schooling as inherently less rigorous," he said. "The attitude of the admissions profession could have at best been described as skeptical."
Home-schooled students — whose numbers in this country range from an estimated 1.1 million to as high as 2 million — often come to college equipped with the skills necessary to succeed in higher education, said Regina Morin, admissions director of Columbia College.
Such assets include intellectual curiosity, independent study habits and critical thinking skills, she said.
"It's one of the fastest-growing college pools in the nation," she said. "And they tend to be some of the best prepared."
The number of home-schooled graduates enrolled at Columbia College is small — about a dozen out of a full-time undergraduate population that hovers near 1,000. But they count among their supporters an influential advocate.
Terry Smith, a political science professor and the school's dean of academic affairs, home-schooled three of his four children in the 1970s and '80s. Each of those children went on to graduate from college, with two earning master's degrees.
"All of my professional work has been influenced by this family schooling experience," he said. "We're all teachers and learners. They're just the apprentices, and we're the master learners."
The school's admissions standards for home-schooled students are identical to those for traditional graduates — minus the formal transcript requirement. Some colleges and universities, though, continue to require home-schoolers to earn a GED high-school equivalency diploma or take subject-specific SAT tests along with the standard requirements.
At Stanford, sympathetic admissions officers have helped make the university a beacon for high-achieving home-schoolers. The support can be seen on the Stanford admissions office's Web site.
"The central issue for us is the manner in which you have gone about the learning process, not how many hurdles you have jumped," the office advises home-schooled students. "We look for a clear sense of intellectual growth and a quest for knowledge in all of our applicants."
Jon Reider, a former senior associate admissions director at Stanford, said the school's pursuit of home-schoolers fits its academic and social mission.
He also acknowledged that Stanford and other schools now realize that home-school students are a prominent enough population that can only be ignored at a university's own peril.
"Part of it is driven by demographics," said Reider, now a guidance counselor at a private high school in San Francisco. "There's a surplus of college spaces" and attracting good students to them is important everywhere.
Magdalene Pride, a first-year Columbia College student, was a beneficiary of the school's aggressive recruitment of home-schoolers.
After earning more than 50 credit hours through a combination of community college classes near her suburban St. Louis home and online Advanced Placement course, Price was awarded a four-year scholarship to Columbia College that covers the school's $12,414 annual tuition.
Among those who helped sell her on Columbia College was Kianmehr, a student ambassador who spoke at a college fair Pride attended.
"They're so open to home-schoolers here," she said. "No one looks down on me, or treats me different. It's very accepting."
I'm taking off for an open house at Brown University with my homeschooled son in a few minutes. He will also be applying at Stanford. This article is timely and encouraging! An omen, maybe? LOL! He'd sure love to go to Stanford and he's also a high achiever, so maybe he has a chance!
Thanks for posting this this morning. :-)
Hope all goes well with your son. I've always believed that homeschooling (the right way) teaches kids how to learn, and that is what prepares them for college.
I coasted through high school getting straight A's without learning how to learn. When I started my college education, that quickly became my biggest obstacle, and I had to take a crash course in learning. My kids won't have that problem.
No surprise there. Maybe more people are waking up.
Is there a homeschool ping list?
Just keep him from joining the Delta frat!
Yes, there is. DaveLoneRanger would be the one to contact if you want to be added to it.
Only because they don't have to teach them to read and count...
Well, there is that.
Several years ago the frosh class at Stanford was 40% homeschooled acording to the alum association. Columbia college is not in the same league.
What about the obligatory socialization courses?
ping
Well, this is not going to go over well with the NEA!
I'm asking this because I suspect I missed something along the way: What is the secret of learning? What did you learn when you finally learned how to to learn?
I meant socialization. You know teaching kids to do strip searches for teachers. Learning the pecking order, by getting beaten up. Teachers raping students. Gunmen terrorizing and shooting students. Proper clothing ettiquette (Also hair and make up)(And thats just the guys).
If proper socialization is taught, socialism will follow.
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