This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: College-Attractive Transcripts for Homeschool High Schoolers.

In my eighteen years of advising homeschool high schoolers, one of my favorite tasks was helping teens develop the transcript they needed to fulfill their goals. Our homeschool umbrella school graduated hundreds of teens, many of them college bound. These teens graduated with transcripts that opened the doors they needed for the next phase of life.

Each college is looking for something special in their incoming freshmen. They may simply be looking for teens who completed state high school graduation requirements. However, many colleges are also looking for courses that show that their future students know how to develop an interest, work through rigorous academics, and live an active life.

Many teens are also competing for scholarships that depend on a powerful transcript.

A transcript is a snapshot of your teens whole high school academics and more, all crammed together on one sheet of paper.

Let’s start with the transcript form. Just like homeschooling: there’s not ONE right way to make a transcript form. With that in mind, let me talk to you about the editable transcript form we used with our umbrella school (and is offered by 7SistersHomeschool).

The 7Sisters editable transcript includes step-by-step how-tos for completing the transcript.

Remember, there’s not ONE right way to do a transcript. However, these are the items we include.

The most important thing to put on that transcript is your teen’s name and date of birth, because otherwise colleges will not be able to discern WHO this transcript represents.

Not all transcripts include this. However, it is useful for admissions officers (and you want to make them happy).

Look at the top left corner. There is a little section on the transcript that looks at the core subjects. That box shows the core courses and what years those courses were completed.

It is wise to include a legend or a key that tells what the levels of rigor for your teens courses. (You can see that in the top-right box.)

In the box with the legend, you can also include SAT or ACT scores (or other pertinent tests).

Note on the sample transcript, each year has it’s own section (grades 9, 10, 11, 12).

Colleges want know that your homeschool high schooler is capable of pulling a good, strong GPA in high school so that they can transition well to college.

With traditional GPAs, you have a letter grade and a number assigned to that letter. So

Um, some high schools would break that down even further:

There are even more ways to break down a GPA.

A weighted GPA, on the other hand, is for high schools who want to show that their teens are working at very rigorous levels.

So they might give a highly rigorous course (like an AP course) more “points”. For instance:

That is why colleges want to know grading scales, and the GPAs!

In their admissions algorithm,

And so everybody ends up in the same kind of algorithm. In other words, one transcript is comparable.

Levels show the amount of rigor a student has worked on each core course.

Check college websites. They will tell you what they are looking for. For instance:

Transcripts should show the ability to develop interests in the future college major. For instance, future English majors could spend a whole semester or a whole year on like CS Lewis studies or world literature. So they’ll, they’ll go in depth on a topic and not just stay at the surface.

Courses in personal development help teens build their own transcript, but also their lives, with courses like career exploration or really dive into health and make it an enriched credit. Those kind of things show academic richness.

Then very important is you want to include, not for credit but for richness, extracurriculars or activities.

Teens build a powerful transcript with they volunteer at the museum, church, or some other cause.

This is an optional suggestion. Teens who compete in some way are showing that they have competitive drive. One of our favorite podcast episode about a competition that homeschooler Nathaniel Mack participated in for the conservation district in Virginia. (Nathaniel is the son our friend and Cousin Natalie Mack.)

Remember, there’s not ONE right way to create a homeschool transcript, but these suggestions have worked well. Join Vicki for a discussion on college-attractive homeschool transcripts.

Thanks to Seth Tillman for editing.

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