• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

For homeschoolers, the picture is a bit prettier. Even the most formal, structured homeschool curriculum leaves teens with plenty of time that they can decide for themselves how to spend. Many homeschoolers end up being just as busy as their schooled counterparts, but they have more control over what they do with their time: They try classes at a local community college; they volunteer in the community; they find mentors to work with and learn from; they try out jobs. They begin to get a feel for the possibilities of life as adults while they still have support from home. With experience doing real, useful work, homeschoolers can be both more realistic and more optimistic about their options than their schooled peers.

Homeschoolers also have another big advantage as they consider their future. Simply by being homeschoolers, they free themselves from some of those automatic assumptions about college and about jobs. They don’t assume that college is their only acceptable option, and they investigate all kinds of possibilities most high school graduates never consider.

What about College?

Homeschoolers are popular people these days in college admissions offices. Homeschoolers have been admitted to hundreds of colleges throughout the country, to Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale, state universities large and small, technical institutes such as Rensselaer Polytechnic, small religious colleges, and the military service academies. On the other hand, a few schools, particularly some state colleges with strict numeric admissions formulas, still aren’t quite sure how to deal with homeschooled applicants and might hesitantly suggest applying as a foreign student. But ask most college admissions officers about homeschoolers, and you’ll probably hear that homeschoolers are a valued addition to the diverse mix sought for every entering college class, for some of the following reasons:

Homeschoolers are eager to learn; they do not hesitate to ask questions and actively seek out answers.

Homeschoolers are focused: They tend to know what they are trying to accomplish and look for the best ways to reach their goals. If they are attending college, they are usually there because they want to be there and expect it to be worth the time and energy they put into it.

Homeschoolers are used to making decisions for themselves. They are used to setting priorities, devising schedules, and completing projects on their own. Because of their experience with this aspect of living on their own, they are much less prone to the temporary decline in grades typical of college freshmen just getting used to living on their own. (Some homeschoolers report having to watch themselves carefully, though, so that they do not fall into the habit of evaluating what they learn solely on the basis of their test scores and grades.)

So how do homeschoolers apply to colleges when they don’t have the traditional transcripts and diplomas? In fact, colleges are seldom much interested in either because most transcripts are very similar and give little information to distinguish one applicant from another, and diplomas are just fancy certificates. The homeschooled applicant normally relies heavily on test scores and on letters of recommendation from parents, mentors, employers, and family friends. In lieu of the formal transcript, most colleges will accept a narrative account of the work done by a homeschooled applicant: what and how he studied, why he took the approach he did, how it fitted him for further study. Recommendation letters should be genuine accounts of the applicant’s character and abilities and not just clichéd collections of praise and affection. Admissions committees are interested in how well a candidate is likely to do at their college and in the contribution to the learning atmosphere her presence on campus will make. Letters and essays that make an applicant stand out from five thousand or fifteen thousand other applicants can make the difference between acceptance and rejection.

There are a number of good