How Homeschool Freshmen Can Get a Jump on the High School Transcript

Here’s how homeschool freshmen can get a jump on the high school transcript.

7Sister Marilyn has been principal of our local homeschool umbrella school for more than 2 decades. She has been advising college-bound homeschoolers in creating a college-attractive transcript for all these years. This is a post Marilyn created that shares some of the information she learned at a college-admissions seminar hosted by Tufts University.

You can take this information as a planning tool for creating a great transcript for most competitive colleges. So here’s how homeschool freshmen can get a jump on the high school transcript.

Vicki and I attended a seminar, given by Tufts University, about the criteria the admissions office evaluates in recommending someone for admission. Tufts’ admission process is considered selective. They admit about 21% of the students who apply, with mean SAT scores (according to their website) of 670-760 (critical reading), 680-760 (math), and 680-760 (writing).

Despite these impressive scores, the admission selection is not only based on test scores. They also look at:

• the high school transcript
• talent
• voice

Some of the criteria are not in your control and some have to wait until you are older, but there are some things that homeschool freshmen can get started on now.

Homeschool Transcript

What about talent?

This is where your extracurricular activities come in. Tufts University (and other competitive universities) look for several things:

• One is whether a student is well-rounded or specialized. Neither is better than the other. What they want in either is to see activities that are sustained over all four years or that you have a variety of activities in which you are immersed, rather than dabbling in activities a few hours here and a few hours there.
• Another is involvement for all four years of high school. One major mistake is to neglect extracurricular activities in your underclassman years and suddenly becoming involved as an upperclassman. They are well aware that many students that wait to become involved as upperclassmen are playing “the admissions game” and trying to impress the college admissions officers. Here is a post explaining extracurriculars.

• Yet another is leadership. Leadership does not simply mean being president of something. It can include coming up with ideas for an organization your teen is involved in, organizing a small team for a service project and more. Also, while it is good to show some leadership, they also are aware that there need to be good team members as well as leaders.
• Community service is also a necessity. Log hours. Log hours. Log hours. Here’s an episode of The Homeschool Highschool Podcast about how to include service on the homeschool transcript.