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School Profile on College Common App


Guest glentaylor
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Guest glentaylor

My senior high school son is filling out the Common Application for a handful of colleges he is applying to. I am filling in what is required from the school counselor. One thing they ask for is a School Profile document. Does anyone have any insight into what a home school parent would provide? Any help you can provide for this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Glen

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I'm not sure it is a good one. On the back of my public schooled son's transcript is the school profile for his public high school, and it is mostly statistics like how many students go to college and the grading policy. In mine, I told what I thought colleges might like to know about how our homeschooling was done. I stated why this child chose to homeschool for high school, our homeschool's goals, our method (something like "We adapt the classical curriculum TWTM... I teach some classes, some are done independently, and some at CC..."), what contitutes a credit, when we homeschool (roughly follow the public school schedule), why I don't give grades, why the transcript doesn't have dates (homeschooling flexible and some classes taught a little bit over a long time, others all at once intensively, and others in a more conventional manner over the course of a school year), and I define "high school" since we don't give dates. It came out to be one side of a page. I'm not sure whether giving all this info will help or hurt, since my son's transcript looks pretty normal other than the lack of dates and grades, but since he's worked hard for high school, I'm assuming that we needn't worry about telling people how we actually did it. Surely by now colleges have run across enough homeschoolers not to be upset by something like the concept of a credit for a class that was taught 15 minutes a day for 4 years? If they want a student that has been conventionally taught all his classes, then maybe it is as well that they are forewarned that mine is not that student? I don't know. I'll be interested in seeing what others say. We've submitted this to one school, but I don't know if it will "work" or not.

-Nan

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I love what Nan said about the profile!

 

We included some info on the teachers for outside classes (Ph.D. from .... in .... or B.A. from ..... in .....) Since my kids had some amazingly well-qualified teachers, we thought this would help strengthen our school profile!

 

We also mentioned our lack of honors classes -- something along the lines of "even though we did not designate any of the classes as 'honors,' the work done early in high school provided a strong background for the more advanced AP and college classes....."

 

We also discussed the progression of classes -- 6 English classes, including .....; extensive background in social sciences including not only American and world history but also two college-level classes in economics or whatever.....

 

To some extent we used the profile to fill in the gaps left by the transcript and answer any obvious questions -- why the community college class, why no fourth year of science, why no honors classes, why so many AP classes, etc.

 

I hope this helps -- I found writing the school profile and the counselor's letter to be the most challenging part of homeschooling high school! (The actual teaching is the easy part!) :D

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and I did something similar to what Nan & Gwen said.

 

I included a bit about our philosophy, and how some courses were taken at home, some on-line, and some at cc. I also mentioned his progression of courses and how his courses meet the requirements for a high school diploma in our school district.

 

I talked a little bit about how we approached certain subjects, and how we did the high school sciences at home. (Note that one college specifically asked about this in our visits this summer).

 

I also talked about how none of his course were labeled "honors" and why. I also referred the reader to the detailed course descriptions that I will attach with his transcript.

 

HTH,

Brenda

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  • 10 months later...
Thanks for all the useful thread bumps, today, Jane!

 

~Kathy ... also in the midst of all this stuff

 

Kathy, what is amazing is that I still have some memory function which led me to search for these helpful threads. The real thanks goes to the participants on the first go around who offered wise and practical words. Hats off to my Well Trained Friends!

 

Jane

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