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Do you know any homeschoolers get in to top colleges?
what are there stats?
How do schools like MIT, Harvard, Yale treat homeschoolers?

By Triangle (Triangle) on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 07:32 am: Edit

Anybody??

By Texas137 (Texas137) on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 07:50 am: Edit

Yes, all of the elites have accepted homeschoolers. Stanford in particular is very friendly towards homeschoolers, who are accepted at twice the rate of private and public schoolers (of course, we're talking about really tiny numbers). Their website has a very nice description of how they treat applications from homeschoolers, which probably applies to some of the other elites as well.

Other sources of info:
Cafi Cohen's website on homeschooled teens is at:http://www.homeschoolteenscollege.net/
There is also a brand new, fairly active discussion list on this topic at yahoo groups called homeschool2college. Subscribe at:
homeschool2college-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
You can also look for discussion at this site. Go to "Highschool life", then scroll all the way to the bottom. This is a very low volume thread because it never rises to the top.

By Triangle (Triangle) on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 07:57 am: Edit

thanks for your response.

what about the extracurriculars? Are homeschoolers at a disadvantage on it?
by the way i'm rejected from stanford this year, probably not because my ECs, but SAT score 1330, too low.

By Texas137 (Texas137) on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 10:35 am: Edit

Homeschoolers usually have great ECs because they have time to pursue their interests. But they are individual or community-based rather than school-based ECs. Homeschool support groups frequently have things like drama, soccer, chess. The community may offer things like competitive swimming, gymnastics, scouts, church. Or homeschoolers can have volunteer, work, or internship experience in their field of interest. Homeschoolers also enter competitions like Science Bowl, olympiads, Nat'l Latin exam, etc. as homeschooler teams or as individuals. A homeschooler from MA was #1 in the world at BOTH the Int'l Olympiad in Informatics (programming) and the Int'l Math Olympiad in 2001. He is now at MIT. All that stuff counts as ECs.

We have a homeschooler friend finishing his 1st year at Stanford. He took a lot of college courses in high school, wrote great essays, and did chess club, math team, science bowl, Great Books discussion, and drama through the local homeschooling support group. I know another homeschooler who is interning at a local architect's office and will be applying to architecture programs. Another one works for a vet and plans to be pre-vet in college.

What exactly do you want to know? If you've already applied to Stanford, you must be a senior. It's too late to do much about ECs at this point. Where else have you applied and were you accepted?

The Colfax family wrote an interesting book you might want to look for. It's called "Homeschooling for Excellence" and is about their experiences getting their 4 sons into one of the Ivies, Yale I think. One of them went on to Harvard med.

By Critical (Critical) on Tuesday, April 01, 2003 - 09:55 pm: Edit

Hi Triangle! I am a homeschooler. Just got accepted to Duke yesterday! So far, I have also been accepted to Boston College, Colgate, lots of likely letters from Trinity, and wait listed at Middlebury. I have been homeschooled since tenth grade because I have lupus, and therefore, I have no extracurriculars except for doctor's visits, piano lessons, etc. on my applications. I am still waiting to hear from Yale (my first choice) and Harvard. Judging by the responses I have received, colleges seem to really like homeschoolers. My advice- write great essays and draft a letter explaining why you chose to be homeschooled. Good luck!

By Triangle (Triangle) on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 01:08 am: Edit

congradulations and good luck to you Critical.

I'm homeschooled, almost no EC(same as you), SAT 1330, just rejected from MIT, stanford.

Can you post some of your stats?

By Amylase (Amylase) on Wednesday, April 02, 2003 - 01:42 am: Edit

oh!

keep your decisions posted

thanks

By Critical (Critical) on Thursday, April 03, 2003 - 11:19 am: Edit

Triangle- I just got rejected from Harvard and Yale. Really bummed because had awesome Harvard interview and he told me that I would definitely get in. When I visited Yale this fall, the admissions officer kept saying, "When you come to Yale, blah blah blah." I am really dissapointed. At least Duke wanted me.
SAT 1460 770V 690M
730 Writing
660 Math IC
30 ACT- 97th percentile
4 AP English