Applying to college as a homeschooler

/ Holly Stoner

As promised, this article is about the process of making a transcript and sending one off to college for your home educated teen. Making the transcript isn’t hard, I promise you, it is not. You don’t need to pay for a transcript service. You can make a professional looking transcript all on your own. I have provided you with an example in my FREE FORMS page. I put that printable form into a word document format to be easily edited by you, but you will want to export and save your final document into a PDF when you’re ready to send it to a college. I will explain the steps in more detail. The image to your right is exactly what I use for my children and what I sent to college for my graduated teenager. To be honest with you, I wasn’t worried about what was on the transcript or how it was presented, it was only nerve racking because it was a homeschooled transcript, and I wasn’t sure how it would be received. I need to point out that my graduated teen applied to community college which is generally an easier process to begin with. He went this route to save money on his general education classes as opposed to starting out in a 4 year university. He had other choices in his list of colleges. Whatever college your teen is interested in you should look at their admission’s process. If they don’t have it on their website (most do), call and ask.

Please refer to my articles, here, and here, to give you more information. The latter link contains everything you need to know about GPA. I will include links throughout this article to give you more help in home educating your high school children. Here are my suggestions on how to stay organized and keep records for your high school teens.

  • Create a grading system and begin recording grades by 7th or 8th grade.
    • This can vary depending on what’s comfortable for you. I use a 10 point grade scale that looks like this: 90-100% A, 80-89% B, 70-79% C, 60-69% D, under 60% F. Other’s choose to use A+, A, A-. I like to keep things simple. You of course can use whatever your curriculum uses or if using an online course that provides grades.
    • Why begin before high school? This is for you to get used to doing it. To make this a habit. To work out any issues with the process of grading and recording so that you have a well working system in place by 9th grade. Remember that grades prior to 9th grade don’t really count towards anything. Colleges only want to see what was done in 9th-12th grades.
    • How to record the grades can be done in many different ways.
  • Keep good records
  • Create a High School Transcript
    • Use a template. You can use and edit mine for free or you can find many other examples all over the internet. This is very simple but important to do because your child will need one to go to college, either now, or in the future.
    • Use can pay for a company to make one for you, such as, HSLDA Service, FastTranscript, Homeschool Transcripts, etc. I have no experience with them.
    • This is what you need to put on your transcript: You need to record the courses credits, and grades along with the GPA and cumulative GPA for grades 9-12. Also included is the graduation date, your child’s contact information, your school information with your name as the administrator or contact person and your phone number. In PA you do not need to name your homeschool, so whatever you put there is up to you. You could really just put “Lastname Homeschool”. (Using your last name) You can also add your grading scale and you can include any test scores if you want to. Then you have to sign it certifying this is the complete record and date it. The date will vary because you will want to date it every time you send it.
    • Fill out the transcript at the end of every academic year with their final grades, credits, GPA.
  • What College?
    • Your teen may have ideas of major to pursue and colleges of interest. During the high school years, you should come up with a 4 year plan to determine what courses your child should take depending on if they are college bound or not and what their interests are. I would also highly recommend you look at the colleges of interest admissions and student acceptance and what may be required to get into certain programs to help you choose your courses for high school.
    • A suggestion by many is to record course descriptions just in case the college wants that.
    • Decide if they will take SAT, ACT or CLEP exams. Does the college they want require those? What about placements testing? Some colleges require those, sometimes this is based on scores and grades on your transcript.
    • Look at all the admissions requirements, some have references, essays, etc.
  • Submitting the transcript
    • The process will vary by school admissions process. Some may have the option of sending a digital copy as is the case with my son’s college or you will mail a hardcopy. This should be done by you, not your child.
    • If you’re sending the transcript prior to the end of the 12th grade year, the best information I got was from TheHomescholar. I searched for this answer, I asked other parents and evaluators, but nobody gave me the information that this website finally shed light on. And you know what? I followed her advice and it all worked out. Please visit her article because it’s valuable information you will want to know.
    • Make sure you sign and date the official transcript before you submit it. My sample transcript for you is in an editable word document but you will want to covert that to a PDF (easily done) before sending it electronically. Then you can download Adobe Acrobat for free and use the PDF fill and sign to digitally sign your transcript, so you don’t need to scan your printed document, though that is another option. You can create an image of your signature do this.
    • Now you’re ready to electronically send it to the college’s chosen email address for submissions, or other process or to mail a hard copy which most suggest that you should sign across the seal of the envelope. Again, this should be sent by you, the supervisor, not your child.

You can find many GPA calculators on the web for free but you really don’t need it if you follow my tips in my article, HERE. I hope these tips were helpful and you make use of the free transcript template I created. If you like what you read here and think it will help someone else, please refer my link, https://mywritelifeblog.com/, to them. All my articles are free as well as my free printable forms and I have provided you with many links to many other resources. Your support and sharing my link are much appreciated.

Here are some college admissions examples:

Your choices are vast. Yes, it may be more difficult to get in to some colleges than others, but in general your teen should have the same opportunity as public schooled teens. Keep good records and keep your transcript up to date and organized and professional and then just follow the application processes. Be sure to print out the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Homeschool diploma and have your evaluator sign it. You should not need this for college admissions, and your child may never be asked for it, but it’s important to note that a change in the home education law makes the PDE diploma state recognized where your parent made one may not be. I personally issued my graduate my own diploma the day he finished, that I made, but I did print the PDE version and had his evaluator sign it on evaluation day. I placed both copies into a diploma cover I purchased.

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