Colleges seeking home-schooled students

The Macon Telegraph ^ | October 14, 2006 | Jennifer Burk

[deaconjim]

For years, colleges have targeted specific groups for admission, from black and Hispanic students to National Merit scholars, to name a few.

Now they're reaching out to another growing population: home-schooled students.

"We are doing more," said Paul Jones, vice president for institutional research and enrollment management at Georgia College & State University. "We haven't done enough, but I think that's something that we want to change and do better."

One of the efforts the university has undertaken is purchasing names of home-schooled students and sending them information about the college, Jones said.

"We're going to be much more assertive in trying to make sure we get our information out there," he said.

The home-schooled population has been increasing statewide and across the nation. As the population increases, so does the number of potential college applicants.

In spring 2003, there were an estimated 1.1 million students in the United States being home-schooled, according to the most recent survey by the National Center for Education Statistics. That's up 29 percent from spring 1999, when an estimated 850,000 were home-schooled.

In Georgia, 36,624 students were registered as home-schoolers in 2005-06, according to the state Department of Education.

Not only are these students growing in numbers, but they are also some of the best-performing students, said Jones, who has done research on the collegiate performance of home-schooled students.

"What I found is that these students not only did well, but they did as well as their peers and, in some cases, outperformed their peers," he said.

Take home-schooled student Rebekah Clark, for instance. The Georgia College freshman scored a 1390 in math and reading on the SAT, is in the honors program and is a presidential scholar. She's also on track to earn a 4.0 this semester.

"I think home school definitely prepared me for college," Clark said. "Right now I'm doing very well in all my classes."

Colleges also are finding that home-schooled students can be more self-sufficient than other students.

"People are starting to recognize that home-schoolers are very dedicated students, and they tend to be able to work on their own very well," said Noelle Goodman, a senior at Wesleyan College who was home-educated her whole life.

Her father taught math, science and languages, and her mother taught history, English and grammar, she said.

"But there were still some things that I had to figure out myself," she said.

Macon State College has had similar experiences with home-schooled students.

"Our experience with home-school students has been very good," said Dee Minter, associate vice president for enrollment services at Macon State College. "We have found home-educated students to be good students with families that stand behind them."

Macon State also is looking at stepping up recruiting tactics.

"We certainly believe home-educated students is an emerging market, and we're always looking for opportunities to better reach those students," she said.

Minter said the problem is that there isn't really a good way for colleges to recruit home-schooled students in a proactive way.

"If you're a high school student and (I'm) a college enrollment person, we know how to find you," she said.

For home-schooled students, it's not that easy. She said the college has started looking to home-school organizations as a way to help better target home-schoolers.

Jordan Buecker, a freshman at Macon State who was home-schooled, said more information about colleges and their admissions would help out home-schooled students.

"Making college more accessible and more appealing to home-school students, I think, would really benefit the school and students alike," he said.

Admissions for a home-schooled student, like Buecker, can be different from students who attend a traditional high school.

Some home-schooled students receive a diploma from an accredited agency, such as American School, and can be admitted to college like any other student. Others have to follow a different procedure.

In the University System of Georgia, which includes the state's 35 public colleges and universities, home-schooled students submit their SAT score, which must be at or above the previous year's freshman class average, along with a portfolio of work that includes all the classes they have taken and descriptions of them. Some colleges may use the SAT II subject tests to determine admission.

ADMISSION GETTING EASIER

The interest in home-schooled students has been a long time coming for home educators.

Ten to 15 years ago, it was difficult for home-schoolers to enter higher education, said Ian Slatter, director of media relations for the Home School Legal Defense Association, a legal advocacy group that defends the right of parents to home school.

This was because of an unfamiliarity with home-school students, he said.

The modern home-school movement didn't really get going until the mid-1990s when some of the first home-schoolers reached college age, he said.

At that time, there were college admissions officers who had never seen home-schooled students before and didn't know what to do with them because they didn't have transcripts, he said.

"Colleges and universities as recently as 10 years ago didn't quite know what to make of home-school students," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "They didn't have the tools and mechanisms in place to deal with home-schoolers well."

He said that by definition, every home-schooler is a class of one, so comparative judgment was missing.

Colleges began requiring home-schooled students to have a GED, he said, and many took offense to that, saying that a GED was associated with being a high school dropout.

Over the years, higher education officials and home-school groups began to work together and appreciate each other's point of view, Nassirian said.

"The higher education side of this deal began to realize that home schooling can produce very good candidates," he said.

At the same time, the home-school side realized that colleges weren't out to get them.

Now, it's not uncommon for a college to have an admissions counselor devoted to home-schooled students, he said.

ENROLLMENTS STILL SMALL

Local college admissions officers report that the number of home-schooled students enrolling in schools has remained steady over the years.

Because of the way names are entered in the computer, some schools could not give the exact number of home-schooled students entering each year, but most were estimated to be around five.

Jennifer Brannon, director of admissions at Middle Georgia College, said the school gets a "handful" of home-schooled students every fall semester.

"Actually, our professors love home-school students," she said. "They think they're the best well-prepared students."

She said the college hasn't started recruiting home-schooled students, but "we probably should."

Mercer University enrolled four home-schooled students this year and last, said John Cole, vice president for university admissions.

He said the university has advertised in home-school interest magazines "from time to time."

"My guess is as more students choose home schooling, we'll have to do more to attract those students," he said.

In 2003, Wesleyan added an admissions policy to accommodate home-schooled students.

In addition to completing the regular application for admission, taking the SAT and producing some sort of transcript, home-schooled students may provide an essay to evaluate the student's thinking skills, according to the academic catalogue. Extra-curricular activities and interviews are used to determine the student's abilities.

The catalog specifically states that Wesleyan recognizes the validity of a home-school high school diploma.

Jones, of Georgia College, said colleges are just now coming to realize the value of home-schooled students.

"This is a viable student population," he said. "One that I think colleges and universities across the country need to enhance their outreach (to). We need to enhance our outreach as well."

[deaconjim]

Yet another article about colleges discovering the benefits of homeschooling.

[Ninian Dryhope]

"good students with families that stand behind them."

They sure got that part right. My daughter was home schooled and she did very well in college. She went to community college at 15 and recently graduated from Rice University with a degree in Chemical Engineering.

Kids need parental support and encouragement to do well. Parents who care enough about their kids to spend the time and make the effort to get their kids a good education and to shield them from bad influences when the kids are young and easily influenced by peer pressure can make a big difference in the way the kid views education.

My wife teaches elementary kids in a little Catholic school and she can tell a big difference in the performance between the kids whose parents are fully engaged and those kids whose parents are basically indifferent to their children's education.

Home schooled, private schooled, or public schooled, the parents make all the difference in the world in the school performance of their kids. It is BS to lay off the responsibility for your child's education on the school and teachers.

No one cares as much about your kid as you do. Nothing has a better chance of helping to make sure that your kid will be living a comfortable and civilized life than to a good education.

A poor early education can be overcome, but why make things harder than they have to be?

[Ninian Dryhope]

"home-schooled students submit their SAT score, which must be at or above the previous year's freshman class average, along with a portfolio of work that includes all the classes they have taken and descriptions of them."

Typical bureaucratic crap. If the kid has the SAT scores, the rest of this is bunk. Who cares if the kid managed to learn enough to get a good SAT score by watching TV? If the kid has learned enough and is smart enough to do well on the SAT, he or she should be admitted to the school.

[deaconjim]

The ability to do self study is invaluable when a kid gets to college. That ability is one thing that home-schoolers develop much better than kids who go to government schools.

Congratulations on your daughter. You should be proud.

[upchuck]

BUMP to home schooling! And raspberries to government schools.

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Is the essential difference between homeschool and others, government-school, some PC private schools et cetera, that homeschools are not self-esteem academies? At home, self-esteem is earned the old fashioned way while in these adademies it is injected. Over doses of self-esteem is implicated in school shootings.

[ZChief]

Hearty congratulations, ND! We did the same. Our daughter is in her second year of her PhD work in New York , our son just started undergrad work. Both were taught at home exclusively until junior and senior year when they took a few community college classes.

I know exactly what you mean about parents that truly care. My wife, too, started teaching in a private school after our kids were all gone. She spots the difference in the kids immediately.

Our daughter insists that her mother was the best at teaching she ever had (compared to college staff). She fully intends to homeschool her own when she has them.

Our son was the type that had a few self doubts about his abilities. It was a tremendous relief to him (and us) when he discovered that he was better prepared for college than most others. He is very relaxed about his academics now and is doing very well.

Your thoughts on peer pressure are, for me, most interesting as I watch kids growing up, including home schoolers. Some parents indulge their kid's peer pressure driven desires while others are able to resist. We never hid our kids in a closet, but provided many alternative activities to the stupid ones. We simply said, and meant, NO to the junk that would likely become a distraction to academic interests.

I truly believe it is mostly if not completely in the parents hands.

[ImaGraftedBranch]

They sure got that part right. My daughter was home schooled and she did very well in college. She went to community college at 15 and recently graduated from Rice University with a degree in Chemical Engineering.

Congrats!

We homeschool our kids also. My oldest (Freeper Ultra Sonic 007) was the recipient of scholarship offers from two major universities. He is on a fast-track mathematics scholarship program, that will allow him to get his BS and MS in Mathematics in 4 years. They recognize that most homeschooled kids are autodidacts. I make no excuse for getting my son to the point where he could teach himself during the last couple of years of high-school. The love for learning we inspired will last him his whole life, and he has already declared that he wants his kids to be homeschooled when he starts a family.

Colleges know what they get in homeschooled kids:

• Less likely to drop out
• Less likely to get into the heavy part scene
• More likely to attend all classes
• More likely to succeed, and therefore more likely to donate to the school as an alum.

[bushfamfan]

Just what they need. Go from a great home schooling environment where they actually LEARN to the brainwashing, manipulating, pc, liberal indoctrination colleges. Sadly, public schools and colleges have been taken over by the leftist nutbags and it's nothing about education.

[hnj_00]

this is just a device by the lib/dem eductionalists...to make sure to indoctrinate the ones that were not brainwashed earlier!!!!!

[knarf]

Exactimundo!

Put a clean kid in a room with a dirty kid and let them play together for a while.

Does the clean rub off of the clean kid and make the dirty kid clean(er)?

Or does the dirt rub off of the dirty kid and the clean kid becomes dirty?

No .. go ahead .. take your time ... I'll wait.

[tutstar]

bump

[RKBA Democrat]

Interesting quote:

"In the University System of Georgia, which includes the state's 35 public colleges and universities, home-schooled students submit their SAT score, which must be at or above the previous year's freshman class average.."

So said another way, the average of other students is the baseline which home educated children have to meet or exceed. So home educated children are actually being held to a higher admissions standard than those who went to the government schools.

[RKBA Democrat]

Congratulations to all of you! I just love these home education success stories and hope that you'll will continue to tell them.

Nothing succeeds like success.

[RKBA Democrat]

"They're now spending money to "recruit" us, folks. Soon they'll be beating paths to our door. I love it."

Doesn't it just warm the cockles of your heart?

[Ninian Dryhope]

Yes, I noticed that too. And since the article started out mentioning that colleges "recruit" other subgroups, such as blacks and Hispanics, I wonder if the Civil Rights crowd would find it acceptable if the SAT scores of blacks admitted to their rinky dink colleges had to be at or above the the previous year's freshman class average?

They would howl discrimination from the rooftops!

But we homeschoolers shrug it off, because we figure we must be really doing something wrong if our kid cannot outscore the average college entrant's scores.

[Ninian Dryhope]

"University System of Georgia, which includes the state's 35 public colleges and universities, home-schooled students submit their SAT score, which must be at or above the previous year's freshman class average"

Since it is the University System of Georgia, that shouldn't be much of a hurdle for a homeschooled kid to clear.

Better for the kid to go to Georgia Tech or Emory University, though, I would think, if the kid had to go to school in Georgia at all.