Author: Dr. Holmes

This is the seventh and final entry in a series of posts about how a homeschooling student can put together a persuasive college application.  In this series, I talk about

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

Although the previous posts have focused on individual parts of the college application, some general principles stand behind most of what I have said:

• Outside evaluation and opinion are valuable.  This is one area where home schoolers often struggle.
• Story and detail are persuasive.  This is one area where homeschoolers can have an advantage.
• The different parts of an application packet work together.  Think about how an asset in one part can balance out a liability in another.

Now I would like to add another general principle:  Be honest.  Put your best foot forward, but don’t pretend to be something you’re not.

The college admission committee’s job is not to be a gatekeeper, screening out “imperfect” students; their job is to be a matchmaker, insuring that the right student ends up at the right college and in the best way.  Often, though, we as parents prevent the committee from doing its job by failing to disclose our child’s academic weaknesses.

Of course, our temptation as parents is to paint over our child’s weaknesses, but that’s not the problem I have in mind.  Instead, I’m thinking about one of home schooling’s great advantages, namely the fact that we as parents can adapt our schooling to fit a child’s needs exactly.  As a result, even a child with very unusual academic problems can do well at home—and that’s wonderful!  That’s a reason to home school!

But it can lead us into ignoring problems that will become obvious and glaring as soon as the child is thrown into a new setting.  Once in a while I read an application that says something like, “Jane did not learn to read until she was fourteen,” and I flinch.  Kids learn to read at different ages, but fourteen is late by anyone’s standards:  does Jane have a learning disability that will suddenly become an issue when she arrives at college?  Here is a sentence I have seen in one form or another many times:  “While his poor handwriting and spelling may make writing exasperating, a good laptop with spell check will fix it.”  This could be quite normal, or it could be that the laptop is masking dysgraphia and the spell check feature is hiding dyslexia.

We don’t want our kids in the schools where they will be quickly labeled with a “disability,” but on the other hand we shouldn’t let our kids go through life with a genuine but undiagnosed problem.  I have seen the suffering this causes:  instead of getting off to a good start with a sound strategy in place, the student falls behind his peers and gets into serious academic trouble before anyone realizes there is a problem.  His teachers try to help, but they try all the wrong things because they don’t realize how different he is from his classmates.  The student feels embarrassed and discouraged.

When the root of the problem is discovered, it’s like day dawning after a long storm.  Suddenly the teachers feel empowered to offer help and exceptions to rules that otherwise would have felt unfair; suddenly the student can tap into all the strategies that all the other people with the same problem have discovered; suddenly we are dealing with reality, in the open air, instead of groping in the shadows.

But by this point there are already bad grades on the books.  The student has already been through a very stressful year, and he may even have fallen back a year in school.  Not knowing about his problem before he left home has caused a lot of unnecessary suffering.

The law does not permit colleges to ask about learning disabilities, because admissions committees are not supposed to discriminate against the applicant on the basis of those kinds of things.  But if you figure out why your child is so different from his siblings and voluntarily disclose that in his college application, you will help the admissions committee play its matchmaking role by giving you the most honest judgment possible about whether the program is a good fit and by making sure your child gets the help he needs when he or she arrives.

I hope this blog post series has been helpful to you as you think about preparing your home schooled high schooler for college!

Series Start

This is the sixth in a series of posts about how a homeschooling student can put together a persuasive college application.  In this series, I talk about

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

In this post I would like to offer just a couple of thoughts about the student essay.  The essay contributes something very important to an application, because it is the only time the admissions committee gets to see your child’s work directly rather than as reported by a teacher or parent.  It goes without saying that it should really be your child’s work—anything else would make this part of the application pointless!  But assuming your child writes his or her own essay, here are some suggestions you can make as a parent.

First and foremost, the student needs to be told, “Show your own thought!”  Most colleges ask for an essay about why the student wants to come to this particular college, and I don’t know how many essays I have read that basically said, “I want to come to Wyoming Catholic College because this is what the College website says.”  Repeating what the website says is not helpful:  we’re already convinced by our website, but we’re still waiting to be convinced by the applicant!

This problem comes up in more than one way.  Our application form also asks the student to write an essay on some book that he or she considers good and to argue that people should read the book.  All too often, the applicant writes an essay that is just a summary of the book:  “In this book, Frodo goes on a long journey.  He travels with friends.”  It is good to know that the student can read a book and summarize it, but it would be even more helpful if the student would let us in on what she is thinking.  She needs to show her own thought.  Let us watch her mind in action:  the essay should open the hood and let us see the engine running.

Second, tell your student to think about the admissions committee and how they will perceive things.  This is just the age-old rhetorical truth that you need to think about your audience.  Try to be different:  guess what the admissions committee probably sees all the time and then write something else.  For example, we ask students to write about a good book, so how many applications do you think we get that say, “My favorite book is The Lord of the Rings”?  And try to sound like someone the admissions committee will perceive as ready for college.  I recall reading an application in which the student wrote, “I think that every college student should read Where the Red Fern Grows.”  I love that book, but my ten-year-old has read it.  I wish the applicant had told me about a book that requires maturity of judgment and sensibility.

And with these few thoughts about the essay, we have finished my walk through the parts of the application.  In my last post, I will offer a few concluding thoughts about home schoolers and the persuasive college application.

Next Post

This is the fifth in a series of posts about how a homeschooling student can put together a persuasive college application.  In this series, I talk about

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

In this post, I want to focus on the high school transcript.  Even transcripts from a private or public high school offer little to the admissions committee, because the committee doesn’t know what kind of standards were enforced at the high school in question:  what does a B in algebra mean from this school as compared to that school?  But to be honest, transcripts from home schoolers are usually so badly done as to be worthless.

To begin with, home school transcripts often come across as unreal.  I can’t tell you how many applications I have reviewed from home schoolers with straight A’s for all four years of high school!  The parent may be afraid that a poor grade on the transcript will reduce the odds of their child’s admission, but this isn’t true at all.  In real life lots of people get good grades in this and poor grades in that, and the committee sees it all the time:  lots and lots of people who got a C in algebra succeed in college!  But more than that, the straight-A transcript doesn’t help because just gets lost in the flood of home schooled straight-A transcripts the committee reviews every year.  It’s meaningless.

But, you may object, my child really is bright and hardworking and really has earned A’s in all his courses!  Great:  here is your chance to give the admissions committee something even more useful than a transcript from a public or private school.

Transcripts usually just list courses and grades:  it would be too complicated for a big educational institution to do more.  But this leaves the admissions committee wondering:  What does “English” mean at this school?  What is “American History”?  And for that matter, what was taught in “Algebra”?  If you can simply list the textbooks and source texts used in your home school courses, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.  As an admissions committee member, I am not impressed that your student took “English”:  everybody does.  But if I see that your child has read Shakespeare and Twain and a bunch of other authors I recognize, I will feel like I understand your child’s accomplishment.

Next, say something about how your child was graded.  What standards and rules were enforced?  I sometimes come across statements like this in a college application from a home schooler:  “We have had no set deadlines for assignments.”  I wish you would have set deadlines for some things, so your child can practice what it will be like to perform under pressure at college; there is an art to handling a deadline, and it is an art learned only through experience.  But still, I appreciate that the parent explained the standard used, because that gives me a better sense of what the grades on the transcript mean.

Here is another statement I sometimes come across:  “We had no grading scale; we did things until they were correct.”  It’s good that the parent explained how the grading standard worked—I wish every transcript would be so explicit!—but I would urge this parent to consider reflecting different levels of achievement somehow on the transcript.  If your child did A-level work on the first try in English Composition but had to re-do his work eight times to get an A in Math, that is relevant information for the admissions committee, and being open with the committee avoids that impression of unrealism I mentioned above.

Whatever your standards are, make them explicit to the admissions committee either in the letter of reference or in a page attached to the transcript.  Your transcript may be the only truly useful transcript the committee reviews this year!

But all the indirect testimony in the world, be it a letter of reference, a transcript, or even a standardized test, cannot replace the witness of your student’s own work.  In my next post, I’ll share a couple of thoughts about the role of the student essay in the college application.

Next Post

This is the fourth in a series of posts about how a homeschooling student can put together a persuasive college application.  In this series, I talk about

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

In this post, I want to focus on how Mom or Dad can write a very compelling letter of reference for their child.  The secret is very simple.  Most reference letters from parents consist of vague and flabby statements like this:

“Bill was a joy to raise.”

Well, I hope so.  It would be very sad if raising one of your children were other than a joy.  But this comment fails to answer the fundamental question the admissions committee wants to answer:  Does Bill have the ability to keep up in a demanding college curriculum?  This statement is a little better:

“Steven is very bright and hard-working.”

This parent has at least tried to address the key question, but it is a simple assertion.  The parent claims that Steven is bright, but how does the admissions committee know it is true?  Admissions committees want to trust people, but you have to offer them evidence for what you say.  This next claim comes even closer to the mark:

“Molly has always done well in school.”

This parent has offered some kind of evidence for the claim that Molly is bright:  she has always done well in school.  But notice how vague the evidence is:  What does “done well” mean?  By what standard has she “done well”?  Did she do really well because she was never really challenged?  There is still very little for the admissions committee to sink its teeth into.

To avoid all these problems, all you need to do is follow the Golden Rule of recommendation writing:  show and tell!  Doesn’t just tell your reader that your child is bright and hardworking, but show the reader by presenting concrete details.  Let the reader see your child in action.  Some examples will make my point clear.

Suppose a parent wants to say, “Sally is a good writer.  She works hard at writing.”  Much better would be what one mother wrote in an actual letter of reference:

Sally has always been a leader in my writers’ group, which has ranged in age from students several years older to students a few years younger.  Many times, especially in the early years, the other students have contacted her during the week to ask for editing assistance on their papers, doubling and tripling her writing practice and awareness.

By telling Sally’s story with concrete details, this mom has given the admissions committee a chance to see for themselves that Sally is talented and hardworking.  It’s as though the committee was there to see her in action!

For another example, suppose that a parent wants to say, “My son works hard even without my hanging over him.”  How could that be put across with vivid detail?  How can you show and tell?  Consider this excerpt from an application I reviewed:

He wasn’t content to just learn to serve the Extraordinary Form of the Mass; he read Adrian Fortesque’s thick manual on the subject and proceeded to choreograph and teach his fellow servers in the way a coach teaches plays to a team (to our busy pastor’s delight).  And, de facto, he became our parish’s first (and probably most respected) authoritative emcee for the EF since Summorum Pontificum.

By telling a vivid story, these parents have overcome the impression that their judgment is subjective and biased.  And they have taken advantage of the fact that no one knows those vivid details about the applicant as well as the parent:  this is a strength the outside letter of reference does not have.

But of course, the letter of reference is only one opportunity to offer rich detail about your student’s education.  In my next post, I will talk about how the homeschooled parent can put together a high school transcript that is actually helpful to the college admissions committee.

Next Post

This is the third in a series of posts about how a homeschooling student can put together a persuasive college application.  In this series, I talk about

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

This time, my topic is the letter of reference.  And to begin, I want to urge you to get one letter of reference from the “outside,” that is, from someone who only worked with the student in a professional capacity—not Mom or Dad or the neighbor.

Of course, to get such a letter of reference your student will have to have some kind of out-of-the-home experience, but I have found that this is a good thing to do anyway.  It’s a great confidence booster.  My wife came from a family of very gifted children, and comparing herself with her brothers she thought that she was probably not smart enough to go to college.  One semester at the local community college cured her of that illusion!  And then as a bonus, it does also open up the possibility of an outside letter of reference.

A letter from outside the family offers a college admissions committee a couple of advantages that Mom’s letter can’t match.  First, someone who teaches in a high school or a college can recommend the applicant based on a comparison with a much larger group.  Mom may home school a dozen kids, but someone who teaches in an institution will have taught several hundred or even a thousand children, and it sets that teacher up to make some strong statements for the applicant.  Consider this line from a real letter of reference:  “I have taught in a variety of educational settings: public, private, and home school at both secondary and elementary levels.  Rarely have I taught a student who is this capable on all fronts.”  That is a phenomenal witness!

A second advantage the outside letter of reference bring is, for lack of a better word, objectivity.  Even though Dad or Mom may succeed in being brutally honest about their child, the admission committee members know in the back of their minds that the parent writing the recommendation letter stands to benefit if the student is accepted.  When the letter comes from someone who has only known the student in a professional capacity, that person doesn’t stand to win or lose by the student’s acceptance.  Whether or not it’s fair, the admissions committee will feel that this is a more objective testimony.

But if you can’t get an outside letter of reference, don’t despair.  Even if you can get an outside letter of reference, it’s still a good idea to have Mom or Dad write one, because the parents have one advantage no one else can match.  In the next post, I’ll explain what that advantage is.

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This is the second in a series of posts about how a homeschooling student can put together a persuasive college application.  In this series, I talk about

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

And to begin with, the standardized tests.  A savvy admissions committee knows that the ACT or SAT scores are not the last word on a student’s ability.  Low scores can be misleading, because the applicant may have had a headache that day, or may have been in the middle of a family crisis, or may tend to freeze up in testing situations:  false negatives are a reality with standardized tests.  But it is well-nigh impossible to get a false positive:  nobody can fake a great score on the ACT or SAT.  So while low scores don’t necessarily sink an application, high scores are a great asset to the applicant.

They are a great asset to the admissions committee as well, for a couple of reasons.  First, home schooled students often don’t have any outside evaluation of their academic achievements.  The person who graded the student—mom or dad—is the same person who stands to benefit if the student gets into college, so an admissions committee often wants to see some kind of testimony from outside the home.  For many home schooled students, this will be the standardized test.

Second, the standardized tests are—well, standardized.  The exact same test is taken by lots and lots of people each year, so the scores allow a committee to compare this applicant with a very large pool of peers.  This is why the most important numbers in your student’s SAT or ACT results are the percentile rankings:  a 1200 as compared to a 1250 may not mean much in itself, but the fact that your student out-performed 70 percent of the people who took this exact test says a lot.

So don’t be afraid of the standardized test, but take it seriously.  Most especially, don’t take it cold.  The fact is that there are tips and tricks to taking these standardized tests, and the score you get reflects not only your mathematical or language ability but also your ability to take these tests.  Get one of the many books or computer programs that help a student prepare, and make sure it comes with practice tests.  Even just a few days of preparation will make a big difference.  The other people taking the test are using these prep tools, so you need to level the playing field.

If your test results are still not all wonderful, don’t worry:  subscores matter.  Maybe you are trying to gain admission to a literature program but your math scores are dragging down your composite SAT score; remember that the admissions committee is going to pay more attention to your language scores than your math scores.  On the other hand, if your math scores are high but your language scores are low, the committee is not going to be impressed by your good composite score.  They want to see that you have the specific strengths their program demands.

But even if your subscores are low in key areas, don’t despair.  Compensate with another part of the application.  For example, you can ask the person who writes your academic letter of reference to speak directly about that low test score.  Our program at Wyoming Catholic College is reading intensive, and I recall reviewing an application from a student whose critical reading score on the standardized test was abysmal.  But he had taken classes through the Mother of Divine Grace program, and his teacher wrote this in a letter of reference:

“The critical reading section of his test was very low, yet I have a multitude of papers from Joe, written by Joe without any assistance, that show he is comprehending what he reads for class.”

That was a powerful testimony for the admissions committee, and we ended up believing his teacher over the test.  I want to pick up this very point in my next post, when I will talk about the letter of reference.

Next Post

This fall my wife and I began our first year of home schooling at the high school level.  When we sat down to plan the year’s curriculum, we drew on a varied background:  I attended a public high school for one year and then a private high school for three years, and my wife was home schooled all the way through high school.  But in addition, I served for a number of years on a college admissions committee, and I became familiar with what makes for a persuasive home school college application.  I also served as Academic Dean for three years, and in that role I had the chance to monitor how applicants faired as students after they arrived.

In this series of blog posts, I would like to share a few thoughts about applying to college, based on my own experience.  As we go along, I’ll cover the usual parts of a college application:

• Standardized Tests
• Outside Letter of Reference
• Letter of Reference from a Parent
• Transcripts
• Student essay
• Some general things to keep in mind

But in this first post, I want to talk about how these various parts relate.  As the student assembles his college application, he needs to think about it as a whole:  each part serves a particular role within the application, and a weakness in one part can be offset by a strength in another.

To begin with, it is helpful to understand the unique contribution each part makes to the application.  The standardized test offers an outside witness to your student’s ability—sometimes the only outside witness in the homeschooled application—and no other part of the application compares the applicant with as big a pool of peers.  But an applicant cannot be reduced to a numerical score on an exam:  of all the parts of the application, the letter of reference offers the most concrete, living picture.  The transcripts give a picture of the student’s academic achievement over a long period of time rather than on a particular test day, and it can help the admissions committee see whether the student has covered the usual high school topics or something more exotic.  Finally, the student essay is usually the only part of the application that allows the admission committee to see the student’s work directly, not reported by a teacher or reduced to a score.

But it is also helpful to think about how one part affects another.  A college admissions committee will examine all of the parts of an application as so many clues to solving a puzzle.  Maybe this applicant has a low math score on the SAT but high math grades in high school:  does the letter of reference explain the discrepancy?  Maybe this student has low grades in composition:  does the student’s own essay demonstrate real ability nonetheless?  If you think about how the committee will compare the various parts of the application, you can leverage a strength in one part to offset a weakness in another—or you can create a wonderfully convincing case by creating converging lines of evidence for the committee to discover!

In the remainder of this blog series, I’ll go into detail on each part of the application.  Coming up on October 21, I will join my friend Owen Sweeney, a home schooling dad and college admissions director, for a Home School Connections webinar on the home schooler’s college application.  We’ll need to keep it short, but there will be a Q&A afterwards.  You can find our presentation at this link.

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