Any other homeschoolers?

timely
Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:31:25 +0000

Our homeschooled son has a nomination, and we are waiting to hear whether he received an appointment. He should be a fairly strong candidate, so we are optimistic.

Like Heartcross said, standardized test scores aren’t usually a problem for homeschoolers. They learn stuff at home just like kids learn stuff at school. Many homeschoolers also put their kids either in some homeschool co-op classes or else in dual-credit community college classes. Our son has done both. In fact, he’ll have about 50 hours of college credit at the end of this semester through taking dual-credit courses.

Most public schooled kids who are “Academy material” would be plenty capable of earning all this college credit, but they don’t generally have the opportunity to do more than a few classes. Even though the college credits won’t “count” at the Academy, they demonstrate that the student can perform in a classroom setting.

Learning at home probably provides something of an advantage when homeschoolers go to college. Other than the outside classes, homeschooled high school students learn to teach themselves. For instance, I gave our son textbooks, lab supplies, and assignments for biology and chemistry. He learned the subjects on his own. I graded his tests to make sure he was staying on track, and he did well.

Right now he’s taking economics at the community college, and he has a professor whose English is terrible. He goes to class, but when he gets home, he just learns the material himself from the text.

His transcripts contain the courses he has done at home as well as the co-op classes and dual-credit classes. I have noted which courses were completed as dual-credit courses at the college.

For leadership, our son has been involved in Civil Air Patrol. This provided many different leadership opportunities. Additionally, CAP gave him the opportunity to go a summer flight academy and earn his solo wings. We thought that would be a good thing to have on his Academy application.

A group of homeschoolers in our area started a Toastmasters Gavel Club, and we have been involved in that for several years. Our son not only learned about public speaking, but he had the opportunity to serve in several club officer positions, which were good leadership opportunities.

Being homeschooled gave our son the time to start an exotic animal business. He researched animals, planned the layout of his pens, purchased materials, built the pens (with the help of his dad), went to auctions, purchased animals, handled them, bottle-fed their babies and found buyers for them. Right now he is researching tranquilizer darting, so that he can get some adult Axis deer to auction.

This likely gave him an advantage in his ALO interviews as he has many opportunities to interact with adults and is probably more comfortable doing that than most kids his age.

Sports was a bit more challenging for us, as we don’t have access to public school sports in our state. We have a farm, and our son does tons of work for us on it and was in excellent physical condition. We knew that might squeeze him by in place of sports, but we didn’t want to take that chance. Our son loves to swim, so he enrolled in a year-round USS swim program. That has been a great sport for him and also provided leadership experience as he is serving as team captain this year.

Homeschoolers do have to work a little harder to make sure they are jumping through all the hoops that will make them a strong candidate, but it is doable. One of my son’s homeschooled friends also received a nomination to the AFA. My son, this same friend, and another homeschooled friend also have all received 4 year ROTC scholarships.

I think the media likes to portray homeschoolers as a bunch of misfits locked in their houses all day (where their parents likely lock them in closets and deny food and water), so it isn’t surprising that a lot of people don’t know what opportunities are available to homeschoolers.

Most college admissions depts. know that homeschoolers do well, as virtually every college in the country has had homeschoolers attend, so that has made it easier on those of us following in the footsteps of the “pioneers”.