MIT has a long history of admitting homeschooled students, and these students are successful and vibrant members of our community.
Over the past decade, we have seen a surge in homeschooled applicants. Homeschooled applicants make up less than 1% of our applicant pool (and less than 1% of our student body), but these numbers are growing. Homeschooled students come from urban, rural, and suburban neighborhoods. Some have been granted a formal high school diploma, while others have not. Please note that we do not require a high school diploma or GED from our applicants.
stanford homeschool acceptance rate
This year Stanford University accepted 26% of the 35 homeschoolers who applied–nearly double its overall acceptance rate. Twenty-three of this fall’s 572 freshmen at Wheaton College in Illinois were homeschooled, and their SAT scores average 58 points higher than those of the overall class.In a Class by Themselves
Among homeschoolers who end up at Stanford, “self-teaching” is a common thread. Parents usually teach in the early grades, assigning and correcting work, but later shift to a supervisory role, spending more time tracking down books and mentors. Stanford-bound homeschoolers typically take several college courses before they apply. The admission office encourages this, both to help with evaluation and to give students a taste of classroom learning before they arrive on the Farm.
For the past two years, for instance, the University has tracked every application from a homeschooled student. These forms get flagged with a special code that lets reviewers find them among stacks of applications and helps admission officials chart emerging trends. Many top schools do not do this, including Harvard and Yale.
A popular speaker at homeschooling conferences, he has offered hundreds of families encouragement and advice on getting into college. In 1997, the magazine Growing Without Schooling published Reiders explanation of the Universitys requirements and his tips for homeschoolers seeking to apply. Written in the form of a letter to a Stanford hopeful, his article went to thousands of readers and has been passed from family to family. Today, homeschoolers who ask Stanford about its policies receive that letter as part of the reply.
This can leave kids with a sense of separateness. “Ideally, homeschooling is a lot better than public school, but it can be easy to get lonely,” Hall says. “You have to be willing to be weird, to not fit in.”
Whereas some state schools insist on seeing grades–prompting homeschoolers to cobble together course lists and rate their own performance–Stanford asks gradeless applicants to describe their curriculum in detail. The core of the application then becomes what the students write about themselves and their education. “We would like to hear about how the family chose homeschooling, how the learning was organized and what benefits (and costs, if any) they have derived,” Reider wrote.
There’s a new path to Harvard and it’s not in a classroom
The real value lies in what the added freedom of homeschooling allows students to do with their time.
Contrary to popular belief, homeschoolers are not shut-ins. Research suggests that homeschooled children actually gain closer ties to their community, relating to people outside of their grade level. Homeschoolers learn to become active participants in their neighborhoods and soak up the etiquette of adult life in the process.
Contrary to popular belief, homeschoolers are not shut-ins. Research suggests that homeschooled children actually gain closer ties to their community, relating to people outside of their grade level. Homeschoolers learn to become active participants in their neighborhoods and soak up the etiquette of adult life in the process.
Away from the standardized tests and rigid schedules in public education, kids can let their creative sides flourish, learn about the world they live in, and, when its time, earn acceptance into the best colleges in the world.
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Highly Selective College Admissions
Highly Selective Homeschool Admissions
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A basic expectation for students who wish to be competitive in highly selective admissions is that they have a rigorous high school education with strong development in all of the core areas: math, English, social science, science, and foreign language. Homeschoolers are advised to make a four year plan as they enter high school. This plan may be revised, but it will create a foundation for core subject studies and ensure that the student has budgeted adequate time to complete the expected courses. Homeschoolers are expected to document their high school academics and present them when they apply to college through their homeschool documents. Those documents include the transcript, course descriptions and school profile.
Do Colleges Love Homeschoolers?
Is your homeschooler hoping to be admitted to a top-ranked school such as Yale, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, or Stanford? While there are homeschoolers and unschoolers who are successful in admissions to top colleges, including Ivy League colleges, homeschooling alone is not enough. Homeschoolers who are accepted to highly selective colleges typically have worked exceptionally hard at developing their talents and have very strong academic and extracurricular profiles. If your homeschooler has his or her eyes set on a highly selective school, here are few things to keep in mind.