Homeschooled to Harvard?

notjoe
Tue, 02 Sep 2014 22:10:39 +0000

@nerdygirlyy,

Here is a graph from the Crimson from their just-published survey of incoming freshmen, class of 2018:

http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/freshman-survey/makeup/

As you can see, roughly 0.3% of incoming freshmen who responded to the survey reported being homeschooled. That’s five freshmen in a class of 1667.

That seems kind of bleak. After all, homeschoolers comprise a much larger percentage of the school-age population than 0.3%. So, it is uncommon to go from homeschooling to Harvard. However, in your case, I’m not sure that Harvard would count you as homeschooled. The Florida Virtual School is technically a public school. Depending on your status as a FLVS student, upon successful completion of a high school curriculum, you may actually receive a high school diploma. It is apparent that upon the successful completion of a course, you’ll be sent an official, sealed transcript for the course. From what I gather from the FLVS website, records are kept by the state for each student. Who keeps the records exactly depends on your actual status with the system, whether you are formally a public school student from a specific public school, or a full-time FLVS student, or formally registered as a homeschooler. In any event, some institutional entity will keep your official records. You’ll need to research how to make use of those official records when you’re applying to college.

It does appears that it is possible to generate formal transcript materials from an accredited school institution through your participation in the FLVS program. You’ll need to research it further to make sure you go about things in a way that maximizes what you get out of it.

Another point to keep in mind is that homeschoolers often value things a little differently than folks who go to traditional schools. We homeschooled our sons through 8th grade and then sent them off to a local Catholic high school. Both our sons are at Harvard. But we know many students who homeschooled through high school, and some of them were quite accomplished, academically, including multiple National Merit Finalists. Yet, none of the homeschooled students we know went off to the Ivy League. Why? None of them applied. Some of them wound up at some very good schools, but among homeschoolers, there seems to be less of a view toward getting into “name brand” schools. Many of the choices of homeschoolers that we know were schools that were off the beaten track, schools with unique features that appealed to the unique students that we know. In fact, truth be told, a number of the homeschoolers that we know were a bit condescending toward us and our children that they applied to, and were accepted to Harvard. Sort of a reverse snobbery. Go figure.

So, my suspicion is that part of the reason there are so few homeschoolers at Harvard is because they’re less likely to apply.

My suggestion to you: Do the research to find out how best to leverage your educational experience with FLVS in terms of college application; and focus on your schoolwork for now, work really hard to do really well. The better you do, the more and better choices you’ll have when you’re ready to apply. And it’s nice to have choices.