Parent of 10th grader just starting to plan, wondering how colleges see rural Alaskans

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Parent of a 10th grader just starting to think about colleges (and planning for the rest of high school with that in mind). We live in a rural Alaska village (few hundred residents, must take a boat or plane to leave town because there’s no road). Kid is homeschooled, under the umbrella of an official public school homeschool program which gives some funding and issues the diploma, but doesn’t provide the classes (we do at home, or find online).

How do colleges evaluate weird backgrounds like that? “Context of what’s offered in their high school” doesn’t really apply. I mean anything can be found/offered on the internet, I guess? Kid is using MIT lectures on you tube to take AP Physics C E and M, for example. And kid couldn’t possibly do sports, clubs, have awards, leadership, or anything like that (does programming projects, citizen science, trail building, wilderness trips). She has zero context to compare herself to anyone else, and therefore has no idea what sort of schools to eliminate off the bat. So if she took AP Bio and Chem in 8th and 9th grades, and got 4s, is that pretty good for where she’s coming from, or does it mean she should not even think about more difficult-to-get-into schools because they weren’t 5s? E.g. she wants to know if a place says it takes 5% of kids or 30% of kids or 60% of kids, are those good rough numbers to use to think of her own chances, and if not, what sort of criteria could she use to adjust those numbers? I realize no one could possibly know their actual chances at anything, but she just wants a sensible way to start to sort through the information. As a low-income family, the difficult-to-get-into schools are really attractive for their financial aid, so knowing whether it’s worth a shot even researching those meets-needs schools would be nice.

Google shows me that people joke about being Alaskan as some kind of college admissions hack, but I have no idea if that represents any reality. I can’t ask others in my situation, because I don’t know any. There are very few high-school age kids in my town at all, and none I know of that are geeky academic STEM kids that want to leave the state for college.

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A 10th grade student who has gotten 4 in AP biology and chemistry and is in AP physics C (implying calculus as well) is very advanced in those subjects compared to the general and college bound student population just about anywhere in the US (other than perhaps a few elite STEM specialty high schools).

But be sure that the student does not neglect subjects like English, history and social studies, a language other than English, and visual or performing arts, which are often required or expected by colleges for frosh admission.

How available would SAT, ACT, and 11th grade PSAT be for your student? Some colleges have gone back to test required, while some others are test preferred. The 11th grade PSAT is the qualifier for National Merit (for which some colleges give big scholarships) and College Board National Recognition (a smaller number of colleges offer scholarships for that).

Also, as the parent, consider the financial planning needed to set a college budget. It does not look like low cost commuting from home is an option even for a University of Alaska campus. But also note that out of state public universities will charge higher tuition and not give need based financial aid, although Alaska is a WUE state so that less selective public universities in the western region commonly offer 1.5 times in-state tuition.

Each college, public or private, should have a net price calculator to estimate financial aid with based on your finances. Some also estimate merit scholarships based on student stats.

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Also, if the student is of Indigenous background (particularly with tribal enrollment), some colleges have tuition waiver programs based on that.

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If I was in her shoes, I would take the admissions rate with a grain of salt. She seems very smart. I would check out the Rural and Small Town National Recognition Programs( For Students: National Recognition Programs - BigFuture ) that College Board has. Not sure how your PSAT/SAT/ACT works, but probably wouldn’t hurt to check those out. I would think that colleges see that kind of background as helpful to filling a niche in their upcoming class, although no one except the AO really knows what the school needs. Good luck!

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Kudos to your student for being so advanced for her age/grade.

I would not worry about your student taking advanced classes offered by a major university online. They are probably taught to a higher level than most public high schools in the US. I have a friend whose daughter attended a strong public HS, but she took many of her classes through Stanford’s online program and she got into Washington U in St. Louis.

I think your student’s unique upbringing in AK will make her more competitive compared to kids with more traditional backgrounds, for three reasons. First, colleges - especially ones that want a national reputation - are seeking geographic diversity. If two kids with similar scores and grades are applying to Northwestern where one is from Chicago and the other is from AK, the student from AK is more likely to get in. Second, admissions officers at strong schools see thousands of students with similar backgrounds - kid is from suburbs of major city, did travel/school sports, belonged to clubs at school to pad their application, played instruments, etc. - and a totally different background will stand out. Third, schools are seeking economic diversity and are looking for highly qualified students who are not from an upper middle class family, or are the first in their family to attend college.

I suggest your daughter emphasize what it was like to live in rural AK in her essays or interviews. No, she may not have been on the soccer team, but in many ways she had to deal with more challenges than most kids applying to college. AOs will look at her as someone who will make the incoming class richer.

I recommend she prep hard for the SAT and/or ACT exams. Given her academic record so far, if she does practice tests and takes and online prep course I bet she will do very well. High standardized test scores will help assuage any doubts about her unorthodox coursework.

If your daughter is planning to apply for engineering or other STEM programs, she will have another advantage: many schools are trying to recruit women for STEM majors. For example, CMU has a target of gender parity (50% male / 50% female) in each incoming class for all its STEM majors.

Has she taken the PSAT? If not, have her prep for the test. National Merit Finalists receive all kinds of scholarships and/or preferential treatment for admissions. I invite CC members who are knowledgeable about these benefits to chime in.

https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/start.aspx?gid=2&pgid=61&no_cookie=1

Good luck to your student!

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For colleges actively trying to do gender balancing, that is likely to be more so for engineering and CS. Biology is already a mostly female major at the undergraduate level (about 59%, versus about 58% for college students overall).

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I’m with @ucbalumnus on everything they’re saying, and while lots of us can share opinions on whether your student would be more or less competitive based on things outside their control, I’d focus on the things you can do:

  • Make sure that your daughter can present a balanced academic record - progress in not just STEM fields, but also humanities and social sciences. Virtually every school in the country cares that their students are excited about and are prepared for intellectual growth in both science/math and the liberal arts. Probably the easiest way to do that, given that you’re setting your own curriculum, would be AP tests in things like history and English.

  • Along those lines, the 4s in 8th/9th grade are great. Don’t worry about them at all. But maybe wait until next year to take the next level tests, since she will be compared with juniors, not freshmen. It’s not “better” to have a 4 (or even a 5) in 10th grade than a 5 in 11th.

  • Don’t miss key requirements: 3-4 years (ideally 4) of English, Social Sciences, Math, and Science, plus 2+ years of a foreign language (which not everyone requires but they will want to see). Plan to document this for her in enough detail that colleges can understand what you’ve taught her/what she’s learned (you can find examples online - imagine listing the books read and essays written in an English class).

  • Testing, testing, testing. The SAT/ACT is going to matter for your daughter more than it might a girl in suburban Seattle with a GPA at her home school, because it provides a genuine benchmark that universities/colleges can use to understand some version of academic preparedness. That said, if she’s able to get to a certain score (say, 1540 or 35), don’t worry about optimizing above that.

I completely understand the question - is she a 5%er, a 20%er, or a 50%er? It’s really hard for us to say, and a lot of it will come down to the story she’s able to tell in her applications about how she learned and grew in her environment. If you do these things, though, I’m certain she will have a compelling story, and then the “advantages” of your location etc. will play out.

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To create a suitable college list, I believe your daughter, in particular, will benefit from considering standardized measures, once they become fully known. An ACT result of, say, 34, in the context of appropriate breadth in academic preparation and a rural Alaskan environment, would make virtually all colleges realistic for her in terms of admission.

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Calling Alaskan and college pro @dfbdfb for thoughts :grinning:

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I would recommend looking at the homeschooling fotum here, just to see if there are any issues others have had that may pertain to you.

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Just beat me to it. Lol

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My thoughts, keeping in mind that I live in Anchorage, so your realities are going to be a bit different:

  • As stated by (at least) @movingtothebeach above, make sure that enough years of the needed distribution of courses are transcripted. That’s a big one (and it isn’t just a homeschool issue, but one that can present problems for kids from rural America generally, and rural Alaska especially).
  • The fact that you’re using one of the public school homeschool programs will make things slightly but meaningfully easier.
  • That said, you have to be very careful to document academic progress; standardized tests help, but are not of themselves sufficient.
  • UAF/UAA/UAS do each have a number of 100% distance-completable programs, but part of the utility of STEM programs (well, STE programs, in any event) includes things like hands-on experience with lab equipment, and that’s not really feasible at distance.
  • UAF and UAS have solid support programs for incoming rural Alaska students. UAA does as well, but the sheer (relative) size of Anchorage is overwhelming to a lot of rural students.
  • WUE schools are very very much worth looking at. Most of them are the “less-prestigious” options in the region, but not all—at the colleges with more name recognition WUE tuition tends to be competitively awarded, but if one gets it it makes, e.g., Oregon State or Arizona or Utah much more affordable. (Also, don’t sleep on some of the colleges with less social “cachet”, depending on the field of interest—e.g., Hawai’i’s linguistics program is world-class respected).
  • Alaska residency is a “hook” for admission to many selective colleges, but only at a small enough level to be essentially meaningless. At the most highly rejective colleges, it isn’t a plus or minus. That said, in the hands of the right applicant it can make for a great bit of scenesetting for essays, so that’s good.
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Thank you to everyone. Here are my thoughts on what you have said so far, and a few questions.

Needed courses: Think I’m OK here? The school district requirements are pretty standard. And I already figured she should do 4 years where they require 3 (science, social studies, math – she’ll have more than 4 for science and math). She did a bunch of Spanish before high school and will do 2 more years in high school.

Documentation: This is trickier. I send report cards to the district that have things like books, curriculum, projects explained. On the transcript they make, it looks like any other public school transcript, with course name, credits, grade. Kid has a few online courses with other teachers also, and those aren’t differentiated in any way. I can save the info, but don’t know how colleges would ever see it.

For example, she took multivariable calculus with an online teacher last semester (and will do differential equations next semester), and the fact she did well in that made ME feel better about the self-study math she did already and will do next. But how does that information get across?

Non-STEM advanced courses: I’ve been hesitant to do AP social studies at home since it’s neither of our strengths, but might do AP government. She likes government.

Tests: I think she can do the PSAT and SAT, but we’d have to travel out of town for it. Is the PSAT worth it? Or can she just use online practice, and then do the real one? Maybe I shouldn’t have had her take AP tests already, but it seemed good to take the tests right after the class, rather than try to remember the material for extra years. I also thought it would be a little better to have something more than “mom gave me an A.” She’s already signed up for both AP Physics C tests, so I figure she’d might as well take them.

Interests: She probably wants to do CS (self-taught programmer), with secondary interests in math and molecular biology. Likes writing programs to visualize data (weather data and ecology data so far) in complicated ways. She’s transgender, so I don’t know how colleges will think of that in terms of gender balance. That also means she only wants to go to safer places if she does leave.

University of Alaska: Online doesn’t have all the classes she’d like to take (even as a high schooler), when I looked at the catalog. I think she does need to get out and experience school in person somewhere, though I do worry about the overwhelm factor (she’s traveled to larger places, but never lived in any). I know UAF has the best reputation in state, but also saw they had only 5 computer science degrees per year in the data I found, so maybe not enough of a program if she wants to stick with that.

WUE does seem like a good idea, though a lot of those schools might be even bigger? And if getting the tuition break is competitive, it also seems hard to know how to think about those chances.

Budgeting: I ran the net price on a few different (private, out of state) colleges to get a sense of what things would cost. The one that took 5% of students would charge us $6000, the one that took 36% would charge us $14,000, and the one that took 58% would charge $31,000. I know my mom has some savings for them, not sure how much (and therefore didn’t put it in the calculator), but only the first 2 would be remotely possible otherwise. I have another kid just 1 year behind this one, also, and want to do the best I can for them both.

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You might want to take a look at the STARS college network. This group provides support to rural students in the college search and offers both virtual and in person sessions.

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A student with interests such as these also may benefit from considering a major in data science, with a field such as biochemistry / molecular biology as a chosen applied domain.

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In terms of curriculum you didn’t mention English but she should take four years of that subject. And for Spanish, the top schools look for three or four years of foreign language but if she completes Level 4 of HS Spanish she is fine. Some colleges have additional requirements.

If you want more guidance you can google the common data set of a few schools of interest and look at section C where HS required/recommended coursework is listed.

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It sounds like you’re being really thoughtful. Just a few followups on your post:

The particular purpose of the PSAT for your daughter would be the possibility of qualifying as a National Merit Finalist, which would open up scholarship opportunities at a range of schools that may or may not have been on your list, but would become affordable. The only way to do so is through the PSAT.

Note that some schools become more selective when a student is interested in Computer Science in particular - your daughter would be applying to the CS program at that school. This is more true for the larger public schools, and less the smaller private schools.

Probably not meaningful for gender balance (in that no one student is all that meaningful). I completely understand her and your interest in safer places - I would just encourage openness here, noting that virtually every public university at this point is going to have an active and welcoming LGBTQ community. You can see a number of threads here and other places that might surprise you in the welcoming nature of schools in (for example) the South.

Yes, this is generally a theme - the less-selective private institutions generally cover a smaller percentage of demonstrated need. This is where the public school opportunities with financial support, whether through National Merit, WUE, or similar, can sometimes be viable options.

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Most colleges require or expect 4 years of English in high school. Some might make exceptions, but mainly if the student has completed something higher level (e.g. non-remedial college English courses, high enough AP English score), but it is best not to plan on that at this stage.

Some colleges, like California and South Dakota publics, require a year of high school visual or performing art. Arizona publics require either art or career / technical education.

If her practice PSAT testing indicates being in range of the National Merit qualifying score for Alaska (last year’s NM Semifinalist threshold was 214, calculated by adding double the RW score to the math score, then dividing that sum by 10), then it may be worth taking the PSAT in 11th grade if any National Merit Semifinalist or Finalist scholarships are of interest (some of them can be quite large, as in full tuition to full ride).

Data science may be of interest, although if she is more technically oriented in CS, math, and statistics, some college data science majors may not be technical enough (so a major in CS, math, and/or statistics may be a better fit in that case, using out-of-major electives for biology, ecology, etc. areas of application interest).

At many colleges at the selectivity level of popular state flagships, CS can be a more competitive major for frosh admission, or changing into or declaring the major after enrolling as undeclared or in another major.

🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride 2024! 🏳️‍🌈 POLL: What Are Some LGBTQ-Friendly Schools? - #9 by ucbalumnus lists aspects of colleges, local communities, and states to consider, given that transgender women seem to face considerable hostility from some parts of the population.

Some are large, but some are small. However, if $14k per year is the price limit, WUE tuition + living expenses will likely exceed that in the absence of additional scholarships.

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To clarify, this is referencing the junior year PSAT/NMSQT test. It’s taken only once in fall or spring of junior year. A PSAT9 or PSAT10 will not qualify her. If you pursue this, make sure you are taking the correct test.

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Sorry I forgot to say she is taking English every year. That’s just already part of the school district requirements, so I didn’t mention it. It’s not her best subject so I don’t know if she’d do AP, but not until senior year at least. The district also requires half a year each of health, state history, fine art, practical art. And a year of PE, and the social studies have to include government (1/2 year), us and world history. It’s the same requirements as the physical public school buildings in my district – that’s how most homeschooling works in Alaska, and it’s quite common here (around 17% of all kids in the state). Not that any non-AK school would know that!

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