So What about College?
By Mimi Rothschild
With homeschooling students becoming a larger segment of the student population, parents are rightfully fearful that their homeschooled children will fail to be accepted by colleges or, at best, will not be limited to a few colleges. The good news is that this is not the case.
The bad news is that they will need to be more creative than most other parents. Whereas other students have a proscribed study plan, and have access to career advisors at their schools to help them reach their goal college, homeschooled students do not have those advantages. Instead, they must be more creative and willing to ask questions than other students, as well as to work with the colleges that they want to go to for further study.
The potential college freshman needs to realize that the college prep classes that students of traditional schools take are proof that the student has learned what the college considers the minimum for potential students to have learned in order to succeed at their school. Also, he must be able to demonstrate that he has the discipline and social skills needed to succeed at college that a traditionally schooled student demonstrates simply by graduating from high school.
An excellent way to do this is to establish some sort of portfolio that demonstrates that the student has learned the requisite skills. For example, a potential business major would have a portfolio that demonstrates an ability to write reports, some accounting skills, and experiences that demonstrates some talent in the business world, possibly by running his self-employed business or establishing a reputation in the field.
It should be noted that the arts and sciences are the most welcomed majors for home-schooled students, as both have a proven record for accepting students based more on what they can do rather than what they have studied, and would be more willing to overlook a lack of academic credentials if the student has shown talent in the area, such as publishing an important paper or being shown in an important gallery. Some majors are much harder for the homeschooled student to get into, but that’s because they require a certain degree of book knowledge rather than experience, such as medicine or law.
However, even if the homeschooled student is unable to get into college, this is not the end of the world. When pursuing a college degree, the student must debate whether or not he will get what he is looking for, and whether or not real-life experience is more vital. A college education merely opens doors easier, but is not necessarily the only key to a rewarding career.
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