Posted on 08/21/2002 9:19:22 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Getting into the college of their choice used to present a problem for homeschooled kids. Witness Rosie Lawler of Lancaster, Mass., who likes to joke that being homeschooled throughout her high-school years meant "I was the valedictorian of my class. I had the highest SATs. I was the most popular girl in school, the prettiest and the president of every club we had."
When Lawler applied to Princeton University, the admissions office replied with a short letter that said Princeton deemed her application incomplete because she hadn't included a transcript of her high-school grades. And never mind that her mother had sent a letter detailing the homeschooling curriculum her daughter followed, Princeton insisted that wasn't an acceptable alternative to a traditional transcript. When Lawler explained on the telephone to an admissions officer that she didn't have such a transcript because she was homeschooled, the only response she got was, "Don't you have any grades at all?"
"It came as no surprise," says Lawler today, "when I didn't get into Princeton."
But this sort of skepticism appears to be changing for America's homeschooled college applicants, and part of the reason may be that there are so many of them these days. And their numbers are growing. Last year, between 850,000 and 2 million students were homeschooled, the large discrepancy in numbers due to widely differing definitions of homeschooling used by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and by the organized advocates of homeschooling.
However the counting is done, everyone agrees that the number of homeschooled kids is growing, perhaps by as much as 15 percent a year. A study by the ED found that, though once the domain of fundamentalist Christians anxious to protect family values from secular manipulation, the most common reason for homeschooling today is to provide the "child with a better education" (48.9 percent), as compared with "religious reasons" (38.4 percent).
But it's not only the increasing numbers of the homeschooled that are getting the attention of even the most elite colleges. It's also the test scores. In 2001, homeschooled SAT-takers had higher scores than the SAT-taking population as a whole, with homeschooled students averaging 568 on the verbal test (out of a possible 800) and 525 on the math, compared with 506 verbal and 514 math for the national average of all SAT test-takers.
College admissions offices also cite other plus factors for homeschoolers. For example, many colleges are looking for diversity among their prospective students — and that includes homeschooling rather than the cookie-cutter backgrounds of public- and prep-school counterparts.
Says a University of Notre Dame admissions officer, "We like students who bring a unique experience to our campus, whether that means homeschoolers or students who have lived in Thailand." Harvard University's director of admissions, Marilyn McGrath Lewis, puts it this way: "Often we're impressed by what someone has done under unusual circumstances, and homeschooling fits the bill."
Homeschooled students are impressing top colleges in other ways, too. Says former Stanford University admissions officer Jonothan Reider: "The distinguishing factor [for admissions selection] is intellectual vitality. These kids have it." Indeed, Stanford has been so impressed with its homeschooled applicants that its admissions office began tracking homeschooled students in 1999 to learn more about them. Stanford and other prestigious schools now send out special guidelines advising students with appropriate SATs who have been homeschooled how best to approach the college admissions procedures so as to make up for their lack of traditional credentials, including that absent transcript with its grades and lists of courses taken.
Still, the lack of traditional credentials continues to pose a serious problem for homeschoolers at some colleges. Without that transcript, say admissions officers at these institutions, they find it difficult to compare a student's academic performance with those of others from public and private schools who come with detailed transcripts in hand. In such circumstances, SAT and American College Test (ACT) scores assume greater importance. Approximately one-half of American colleges and universities require homeschooled students to take additional standardized tests, sometimes including the GED high-school equivalency test and even as many as eight SAT II subject tests. That's a heavy load of testing, and seems to some to amount to harassment.
To help out in a process that is difficult for everyone, homeschooling experts advise students to build a documented record of activities in their community to provide evidence of leadership, a quality prized by many colleges. They also advise homeschooled students to get to know influential adults who might write letters of recommendation that otherwise would be written by teachers.
But what about Rosie Lawler after Princeton turned her down? She's another homeschooling success story: Lawler now is a junior at Harvard.
Claire McCusker, a Harvard student, was a summer intern for Insight.
In fact, being held back intellectually in gov''t detention centers is certainly one of the many reasons for teenage angst. Children were created by God to flourish, not "get by."
People should read the biographies of Thomas Aquinas or Ben Franklin.
Ooohhh! I like that! May I quote you?
LOL...the word picture cracked me up.
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