Looking for community and guidance for my home-schooled niece

Hi, I am a homeschool mom who has had three kids admitted to college, so far. One went to a selective university, and one received a prestigious scholarship.

In your situation, I would recommend taking your mother up on the offer to do concurrent enrollment at BYU. Dual enrollment courses at community college are also a great option, if your parents will allow it. But if not, take the BYU courses for the structured, high quality classes and the head start on college credits. One of my sons is graduating high school this year with 52 dual credit hours.

I create my children’s transcripts, but if you think your mom will have trouble creating your transcript, you can locate a transcript template online, create your transcript, and have your mom review it, make corrections, and sign it. This might also be something your uncle could help you with.

I use Microsoft Word to make my children’s transcripts. But you could also use Google docs, excel, or a number of other programs. A transcript is just a document showing your name, address, phone number, email, ssn, etc, and a list of courses/grades/credits/gpa. You can find instructions on how to calculate gpa and/or a gpa calculator online.

Again, you would just create the physical document. Your mom would verify everything and sign it.

This blog has a lot of information about applying to college as a homeschooler. (This is not my blog.)

You are not at a point where you need to be choosing colleges. Right now, focus on creating your transcript and getting yourself some solid high school courses lined up for next year.

A good goal of courses to have by high school graduation is:

-4 math credits

-4 English credits

-4 science credits (including 2-3 with lab)

-4 social science credits

-electives, including some foreign language

Some schools will accept a bit less than this, but this is a good goal.

You can amass these credits very quickly doing concurrent enrollment at BYU or community college because each one semester college course counts for one full high school credit.

For example, taking English 1301 in the fall and English 1302 in the spring will give you 2 credits of high school English in 1 year.

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Your uncle mentioned you may have a need to vent your fears/frustrations, and coming from a highly religious unschooling background, it might be helpful to visit the Homeschool Recovery forum on Reddit. It is a community of teens/young adults who support each other in transitioning from homeschool experiences that were less than ideal. Many in that group were unschooled.

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@WolfTheSpiderDrone When you talk about BYU dual enrollment, are you referring to Concurrent (Dual) Enrollment credits (which requires having taken at least 12 credit hours’ worth of courses), or AP courses offered through BYU, or just high school level BYU Online High School courses?