Is it possible for a homeschool to provide high school science that will be acceptable to the colleges? My boys had biology, chemistry and physics at home, all with science labs, without any outside help from schools or co-ops. Not only did the colleges accept our science records, they also offered us great scholarships, including two full-tuition scholarships at my son's first choice university!
In our homeschool, we had "Biology with Lab" on the transcript. I gave course descriptions for colleges. The course description was a paragraph long, and described how we taught biology. Much of the information I got from the catalog description of the textbook we used. I wrote a list of the labs that we did, using the list from the book's table of contents. I demonstrated my grading criteria, carefully showing every chapter grade, and a grade for every lab write-up my children completed. A good lab write up got 100%, but some of them "weren't so good." That gave the colleges a thorough explanation of exactly what our transcript meant when it said "Biology with Lab." I saved all the tests and all the lab write-ups, in case a college would ask for a sample of their work (some did!).
We did all our work in all our sciences at home by ourselves. To be honest, I don't know a thing about physics, so my kids were completely on their own with that one (with some help from a video tutorial.) I just graded tests and looked at the lab write ups. (If the lab write up made sense to me, they got 100% - if it didn't make sense to me, they got something less.) Although I do understand biology and chemistry, they did most of that work on their own as well.
Many (even most) colleges will accept lab sciences done at home. There are some exceptions, however. For example, the University of Washington wants "proof" of science. That's why they prefer the ACT test. The ACT covers more than reading, writing and math. It covers science as well. They accept the ACT test as "proof." They also accept SAT 2, AP, and community college lab sciences as "proof." But the University of Washington is in the minority, because most colleges don't have additional requirements. The UW policies have also changed a lot over time. If your child is interested in ANY college, it's a good idea to check their policies every year, because they can change dramatically.
Forgetting about record keeping is on of "The 5 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make When Homeschooling High School." If you are thinking about accreditation and transcripts, you are probably not going to make this mistake! Learn how to avoid all 5 mistakes in my free e-mail mini-course.
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Lee Binz, The HomeScholar, is an expert in "helping parents homeschool high school." Both her two boys earned full-tuition scholarships at their first choice university. Learn how she did it on her website, TheHomeScholar.com, which includes a free monthly newsletter and daily blog support.
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