College Acceptance!

My two daughters have been enrolled part time in High School. They love the electives that I wouldn't be able to come close to duplicating: swim team, theater productions, debate. I love that through Concurrent Enrollment classes, they can be earning college credit AND experiencing something like that academic standard.

As I've mentioned earlier, enrolling them part-time has NOT been challenging. The schools (they are in two different ones in different districts) are very open to that, and the counselors have been great. There has been no issue participating in all the classes and extra curriculars they want and NOT taking the ones they don't. The biggest challenge is the schedule: finding classes that are back-to-back - so I don't need to make multiple trips to the school each day - takes some effort. And it can feel like our lives revolve around school: I've missed the freedom to go and do what we want when we want and not have to worry academic commitments.

Anyway, my older daughter is now done with that experience. She did NOT graduate from her public high school because she did not take the required classes for graduation. (She took theater for all 4 years, debate for 3, stage craft for 1, sewing for 1, and she has taken something like 4 or 5 concurrent enrollment classes.) Additionally, she has taken piano and voice lessons in our home, participated in after-school performing programs, and done classes with one homeschool co-ops and groups

This coming fall she will be attending one of the state colleges on a half academic scholarship, with an additional scholarship for her field of study: Commercial Music, with an emphasis on voice. It is one of the handful of state schools that will accept ALL applicants. It also is one of the few who has the particular program, and we have heard great things about it.

The transcript we submitted was only a list of all the classes she did take for her 4 years of high school. We included her lessons and her classes with the co-ops. We included her classes at the high school, indicated that those were offered there, and sent in their record of her grades. For her co-op classes, because no grades were given, I assigned her grades based on what I observed of her diligence and reference to what she'd learned. (Because she learned a lot she was excited and passionate about mastering, there were a lot of A's. But sometimes I didn't think she put in a lot of effort or blew things off, and those classes got lower grades - though I don't think I gave her LESS than a B.) She was not a perfect student in high school either. AND I should note that because she took almost ZERO science and very little math, her "transcript" did not include those subjects beyond what she DID take. However, whatever that combined GPA was (we did the math and assigned it a number), unbeknownst to us, it was high enough for an academic scholarship, and she was awarded that BEFORE she was accepted into the music program.

For that acceptance, she attended an in-person audition where she sang a piece of her own composition and another she'd worked on with her voice teacher. She also submitted what they called a portfolio (but they only required 2 pieces - not much of a portfolio IMO). These were her own works we had her record in a recording studio - one just piano, and one with piano and her singing. (She submitted these to another school with this same program that ALSO happens to accept all applicants, and she was accepted into their program as well, but NOT given a scholarship. She is considering transferring there after 2 years in her first school.)

I share all of this detail for two reasons. The first is that I do not know how much of our experience having a homeschooler accepted into college is based on the circumstances unique to us (though I expect, given the timing of everything that the acceptance and scholarship had nothing to do with the rest). And second, to demonstrate that there ARE advantages to NOT putting all of one's eggs in the traditional academics-in-high-school basket. If she had done school full time, I suspect her music would not have advanced to its current level, nor would she have had the other classes and experiences which have shaped her current direction.

How will she do IN college? How on earth will she survive the math class required for her major? Is she prepared for greater academic demands? These are open questions. She discovered taking an online concurrent enrollment class, which she failed, that she did not like online classes. She'll avoid those. The other concurrent enrollment classes DID seem sufficiently academically rigorous to prepare her for college classes, and she loved those. We also THINK/hope she has some level of mastery over managing her own time and projects - she's juggled speech writing with line memorizing, with voice, piano, and other homework, without her butt in a specific seat, without someone telling her what to do and when to do it. As for math, hopefully she can find some skilled tutors!

And I don't know if anyone these days is fretting about it anymore, but yes, she does seem sufficiently socialized - I wouldn't credit her time in school with this skill set. Through all of life - plays, church, school, homeschool, clubs, etc., she has had the opportunity to interact with others, and she has been fine to do so.

So is this a homeschool success story? NO CLUE. I don't know yet because life has yet to reveal what this daughter does NOT know and has not yet sufficiently mastered. (I ASSUME when those insufficiencies are revealed, she'll work on them and do fine...?) Beyond that, will she make good, moral choices in her life ahead? Will she be kind and serve others? Will the skill set she is pursuing in college be a financial asset to herself and her family? Will she be sufficiently wise to make a good decision on one of the most impactful choices in life: who to marry? When do we arrive at success sufficient that we can call it that? And how would we know it ALL came from homeschooling? No clue.

What I DO know is that homeschool CAN produce kids able to be accepted in collge, kids that are bright, fun, articulate, and talented. And so up to this point, 16 years in, homeschooling continues to be a blessing in our family!

No, it's not a typo! Gradulation is not graduation, but we are celebrating the close of one chapter and the beginning of another! (The backside of this announcement featured her accomplishments - from winning first place at State in Speech to being a big sister -  and take-aways from her various life experiences.)