onward and upward

Abstract:

The home-school movement, a once-marginalized segment of the educational community, is all grown up and going off to college. As colleges across the nation report increasing numbers of applications from home-schooled students, policies have been developed to evaluate these candidates. Translating years of independent study into something that resembles a high-school transcript can be tricky for the home-schooled applicant, and even more challenging for the admissions officer assessing it. Without traditional points of comparison, like class ranking and grade-point averages, colleges tend to fall back on standardized-test scores. Many require that home-schoolers take two or more SAT 2 subject tests in addition to an SAT or ACT. The Common Application, a format used by more than 300 colleges, has added a supplement for home-schoolers. Home-schooling guides now offer advice on compiling transcripts and highlighting the advantages of home schooling in application essays, as do independent consultants, who offer the same sort of college counseling available from traditional high-school guidance personnel. Often a late hurdle in the admissions process for home-schooled students is persuading colleges that they have the social smarts to get along with traditionally educated peers, although experts who have tracked home-schoolers' academic and social performance in college have found little difference between their transition and that of their peers. This lingering attitude has prompted one home-schooled student now enrolled in a large urban university communications program to liken the co-op he sometimes attended with a very small, very private school and tell classmates simply "I went to a private school."

Home schooled students rise in supply and demand
Chronicle of Higher Education, v54 n7 pA1 Oct 2007

nope

not going away