Mimi Rothschild - Home School Support & Home Education News

By Mimi Rothschild

My eldest daughter doesn’t realize how blessed she is to be entering college in the twenty-first century. We have a pile of brochures and DVD’s from colleges that keeps growing, and the phone rings a few times a week. It’s not that my daughter is a brainiac, although she can hold her own in the classroom, it’s that she is a homeschooler.

Colleges are just beginning to comprehend the fact that homeschoolers are outstripping their peers on every academic level. Over the last few decades, we homeschoolers have come up against confrontation from the public school system. Colleges, however, have simply been a little wary. After all, each student is an investment. How can they ensure that their student body will be benefited by a homeschooled child? Homeschoolers were met with raised eyebrows and quizzical looks from all sides.

That’s all changing. A recent CBS News article confirms evidence that I’ve noticed over the last few years. Colleges are finally getting their act together regarding homeschoolers. When faced with an applicant pool full of apathetic public school grads who have no thirst for knowledge, homeschoolers with an innate desire to learn look very attractive. They are not just going to college because their parents are forcing them to do so. Rather, they have been prepared to excel in the college environment by years spent cultivating independent study habits.

As a result, colleges no longer see homeschoolers as a quirky anomalous question mark but as the cream of the crop.

A word of advice: take the time to prepare your children for SAT and ACT exams. Because colleges have no way of verifying the academic rigor of your child’s curriculum, grades mean very little to admissions departments. However, because these exams are standardized, the tests serve as a good metric to determine the capabilities of your child. In fact, it can be the defining factor in many cases. There are a variety of preparatory texts that parents can pick up in bookstores across the country. The MorningStar Academy offers an SAT prep course designed specifically for homeschoolers. You can learn more about it here.

Secondly, make sure your child schedules an interview with college admissions counselors. In an interview, your child can easily illustrate his or her experiences and abilities that are difficult to translate on paper applications. By clearly communicating, your child can also show admissions counselors that he or she is not a social misfit. Unfortunately, some still hold the inaccurate perception that homeschooled kids have trouble socializing. The interview can do a lot to put these concerns to rest.