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Colleges Accepting More Homeschoolers
> 3/7/2007 11:05:09 AM

An increasing number of both public and private colleges are recognizing homeschool students as much more than a fringe group and designing new application policies to make the college experience more acceptable to kids who never attended traditional high schools and, in the past, had no real prospects for post-secondary education outside local community colleges.

While the homeschooling movement unquestionably has roots in religion, and church-affiliated schools are more receptive than others toward accepting students taught at home, the movement has a long history a considerable number of parents remove their children from school for other largely ideological reasons such as a simple lack of faith in the education system or an accompanying inability to invest in private school. When the movement grew and its children began to come of age in the late 20th century (particularly following an early 90's boom), schools realized the potential of this untapped student body resource, and a considerable number of schools without religious connections began reaching out and accepting them. From 2000 to 2005, the percentage of schools offering a formal application process tailored to homeschoolers jumped from 52 to 84 percent, with nearly half reporting a steadily increasing number of submissions from these students.

Highly esteemed and academically rigorous schools like Harvard and MIT have long made clear that they do not require high school diplomas for acceptance, stating that they are more interested in students' personalities and intellectual abilities. The College Board offers a brief online guide to applying for homeschoolers, noting that they face most of the same requirements as all others: meeting deadlines and achieving excellent scores on standardized tests, listing official transcripts, finding personal recommendations from unrelated individuals, accumulating relevant extracurricular activities and visiting choice schools to tour and interview. They may also earn college credit through dual enrollment at community schools or programs designed to allow all students to demonstrate college-level proficiency through standard exams.

Many parents and caregivers make the decision to remove their children from public school in order to offer them a more rounded, personalized, and efficient education. They believe that teaching at homes bypasses much of the beaureaucratic formality and dull, impractical testing exercises required by our education system. Each state has different regulations for legal homeschooling, and advocates argue that, as long as kids are able to perform the required tasks at a college level, they should receive the same consideration as children who attended public or private high schools. More and more schools, both obscure and high-tier, have begun to agree.

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