Another Transcript Question s/o non-traditional hs

[Mama Lynx]

This is sort of a s/o of the question about nontraditional high school ...

 

Okay, so the advice I get is that if my child has offbeat courses for history and literature and English, then it's best for me to just pull those into a standard "English 9" and "World History" credit, so that the admissions people see what they expect to see. Okay, I can understand that.

 

We've been looking at some colleges that request more of homeschoolers - detailed course descriptions and syllabi. Would we also draw up those course descriptions and syllabi to match the classes that are on the transcript? (My kids physically attended co-op classes that were part history, part literature, part philosophy, part art history. Two such classes, taken together in the same year, would equal a history credit and an English credit, by pulling half the material out of each class and combining it.)

 

Some colleges like to see creativity on the part of homeschoolers. Some do not. We could tailor transcripts and applications depending on what the college wants to see ... but then what about the Common Application? It seems that once we do the Common App, everything must be the same for everyone.

 

What do nontraditional homeschoolers do about dates? The Common Application, and the people who want detailed course descriptions, also want to see dates of courses. Well ... what if you did some here, and some there?

[snowbeltmom]

I have not been through the process yet. I have gained a lot of knowledge from the yahoo group hs2coll. If you look at the files section in that group, you will find samples of a wide range of transcripts - from an unschooler approach to a more traditional approach. Some of the transcripts list completion dates and others do not.

 

HTH a little bit. I will be interested in reading others' comments.

[Ellie]

Would we also draw up those course descriptions and syllabi to match the classes that are on the transcript?

Yes.

What do nontraditional homeschoolers do about dates? The Common Application, and the people who want detailed course descriptions, also want to see dates of courses. Well ... what if you did some here, and some there?

You could put the date of "completion" of the course.

 

Barbara Shelton discusses just this in her high school book. :-)

[Starr]

I think how you write up the transcript is less important than finding a school that fits your child's education. In the end we realized that dd really needed very high test scores and probably more APs ,even if she was in college for her senior year, to apply to some schools. Some competitive schools aren't really looking for the diversity they say they are. They are looking for standard prep school work and tests. Other colleges won't even ask for much in course descriptions and don't need tons of tests to prove yourself as a home schooler. We grouped subjects on the transcript without dates. On the common app they asked for dates and dh wouldn't re format. So he had to make a few things fit. I figure she did the work so if she did part one year and finished the next it didn't really matter when the paper said it happened. She's been accepted into half a dozen very good schools so it all works out. Panic not.

[Nan in Mass]

Starr - Could you explain in more detail how you dealt with the common app?

 

I have one in college, but that one didn't need the common app. I just submitted an undated transcript grouped by subjects. I had a column for grades and marked everything from home P for pass and filled in his community college grades for anything else. For gpa I used his community college gpa, marking it as such. I also put in extra curricular activities, jobs, and his SAT scores. My strategy was to make the transcript as close to the regular format as possible so college could compare my son to other students, but to make it reflect his unusual education as much as possible within that format, so I gave courses very descriptive names and tried to indicate anything unusual about the course in some way. We will avoid the common app if possible, but it may not be possible. Fitting my son into those little boxes is going to be... interesting. More details on how you managed would be welcome.

 

When we made enquiries for our older son, we too discovered that colleges in general, even the more creative sounding ones, want anything creative on top of a standard prep education and good scores, not instead of that. With community college classes and SAT scores, my son did fine, but without those, I think it would have been more difficult. Of the colleges we spoke to, none required SAT2s but they all, even those whose website said optional, wanted SAT scores (or ACT) from homeschoolers.

 

Nan

[Candid]

First, I would be very careful about making sure things don't imply you are fudging somewhere. Sometimes being too not yourself can make you look untruthful to others.

 

And for me I'd really like to avoid having multiple transcripts so I'd lean more towards not using generic and ill-fitting course titles.

 

I haven't quite figured out I'm going to handle Tapestry of Grace which we use, and sounds like the co-op you attend, but I do know I'm not going to try to mash it into a generic format. In our case I will title the history and literature portions with appropriate time period title, but what to do with the rest of the things we will study in any given year? So far I like the idea of something like "additional studies in the humanities for X time period." This in a super short transcript form will appear as "Humanities" but can then very naturally expand in support materials without it feeling like what is on the shortest form doesn't really match what is in the supporting material.

 

Hmmm, I guess reading my own thinking over, I'd suggest you start with the long titles and descriptions and then after those are correct decide on what shorter titles should be, and let those shorter titles evolve naturally out of the longer ones.

[Mama Lynx]

I can see that, but it's mainly the core courses I'm concerned about. Colleges expect four years of English credits. Well, we did the work that one would expect to do to fullfil an English credit -but we did half of it in one class and half of it in another class.

[snowbeltmom]

Starr - Could you explain in more detail how you dealt with the common app?

 

I have one in college, but that one didn't need the common app. I just submitted an undated transcript grouped by subjects. I had a column for grades and marked everything from home P for pass and filled in his community college grades for anything else. For gpa I used his community college gpa, marking it as such. I also put in extra curricular activities, jobs, and his SAT scores. My strategy was to make the transcript as close to the regular format as possible so college could compare my son to other students, but to make it reflect his unusual education as much as possible within that format, so I gave courses very descriptive names and tried to indicate anything unusual about the course in some way. We will avoid the common app if possible, but it may not be possible. Fitting my son into those little boxes is going to be... interesting. More details on how you managed would be welcome.

 

Nan

 

I don't have any personal experience yet, but I have read other homeschoolers lament how it is sometimes difficult to convey their students' educations via the common application. Many times our kids' experiences do not fit in the common application boxes.

 

In these cases, I have read that when completing the common application, that the reader is directed to a page(s) in the homeschool profile, homeschool course descriptions or homeschool transcript in lieu of also filling out the boxes on the common application.

 

I am also interested to hear how others who have been through the process handled the common application. I am still almost 3 years away, but conveying my kids' information via the common application is not something I am looking forward to.

[Nan in Mass]

What is a "class"? A location? A set of materials? A time slot? We certainly had mushy spots where we did something that counted for this and something that counted for that right after each other, both using the same material, neither taking a whole hour time slot. I kept lists of activities and reading and chose which course each item was going to be part of. Sometimes the reading would be part of one course, but the project based on that reading a part of something else. When I had enough similar reading and activities to make up a class, I gave it a descriptive title and called that class done. Although I occasionally split things (half this project counts towards this class; half towards this other class), I was very careful not to double count anything. If I counted half a project, then it only counted as half a project. I kept track of everything by starting a notebook at the beginning of high school roughly divided into conventional subjects: great books, writing, math, US history, world history, peace studies, chemistry, biology, physics, phys ed, logic, living skills, computer skills, Latin, French, Japanese, music, art. Then whenever anything was done, I recorded it in one of the categories. In the end, I juggled things around to make up classes of the appropriate length, being careful not to count anything twice. Some things, like Japanese, never appeared by itself on the transcript. Some things never appeared at all (living skills, computer skills). Some things appeared drastically reduced. For example, writing was something we worked on every year, including cc comp, but the only thing that appeared on the transcript was cc comp. Some things, like world history, appeared as one class but was done in bits and pieces over all of high school, often as part of the background for great books, sometimes as something like see Hadrian's wall or Nagasaki in person or hearing one of the survivors speak. The "school profile" that accompanied the transcript explained how I had made up the transcript and defined "class". The key to doing this is recording of everything the student does - every trip, book, video, textbook, assignment, paper, project, lecture, concert, museum visit - in that notebook so you can divide it up later. That and making temporary guesses as you go along so you know what else the student ought to do and so you can make your yearly reports. I just listed every subject, every year, on the yearly reports to our school system.

 

HTH

Nan

[Mama Lynx]

In this case "class" = classes at a co-op, with other students, and a teacher, at a specified time and place.

 

I don't have any issues with how to handle our work at home, varied and scattered though it may be.

[Nan in Mass]

If, during the year, the "class" had the same amount of instruction time and required the same amount of work as one standard public high school class but dealt with two subjects during that time, then I would count it as a semester of one and a semester of the other. If, for example (can't remember from your earlier post), it was called humanities and covered world history, writing instruction, literature, art history, philosophy, and Christian history, and the student took that for 4 years, then I would call it one year of literature, one year of world history, half a year of art history, half a year of philosophy, and half a year of history of Christianity. Or something like that. That is, if I didn't want to call it humanities 1, 2, 3, and 4 and give some sort of explanation saying this was equivalent to one year of English and three of social studies. I gave mine descriptive titles but I tried to make those titles fit into the standard subjects so I could organize the transcript by subject and not make the admissions people guess whether yyyyyyy was or was not one of the 4 required English classes. Not sure that was helpful... And I have no idea how I am going to manage if I have to fill out the common app. and can't use my own format.

Nan

[Julie in MN]

You could put the date of "completion" of the course.

That's what I do.

 

Although on occasion, I will put 0.5 or even 0.25 credit one year, and the other part another year. Usually that's if it's more complete units that were spread apart by a year or more gap, and deserving of credit whether or not the student goes on to do the rest.

 

Julie