About a week and a half ago, Harvard’s newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, carried an article of the ‘generic homeschool’ variety.  The one bright spot is, that by its presence, it provides evidence of ‘homeschooled kids at Harvard.’  Still, the article has the usual amorphous character that is practically a hallmark of articles written about homeschoolers by ‘civilians.’  The ‘amorphous articles’ are rarely about any one thing in particular.

This article ranges across the usual subjects: the estimated ’number’ of homeschoolers nationwide, the percentage of graduates from that estimate who are accepted at Harvard University (hard to tell because Harvard’s admissions office doesn’t categorize the homeschooled kids’ applications separate from applications from non-homeschooled kids), some biographical information about the featured homeschoolers, religion, and, of course, the opinions of experts.

• The Harvard Crimson, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 17 April 2006, Homeschoolers A Small But Growing Minority    

  But even as the homeschooling trend takes root nationwide, a disproportionately tiny number of these students ever win entry to Harvard.

Obviously, we’re not living up to our potential.

• Nancy Faust Sizer, a lecturer at the GSE, says this lower admissions rate could reflect a lack of information about homeschoolers’ educational background.  

  “Nobody knows exactly what the situation was,” Sizer says. “They can’t even imagine it really.”  

  Lewis maintains that despite having “less complete information” about homeschooled applicants, these students are still evaluated equally in admissions decisions.

And it appears they don’t like not being able to find this stuff out, or maybe I’m just reading that into the article given that I’ve seen the “we just don’t know” sentence in so many places, for so many years.

Socialization is mentioned in the article, “‘When I’d tell people I was homeschooled, they wouldn’t believe it because I didn’t act socially awkward,’ Norberg says.”

And experts dispute the homeschooled kid’s conclusion, “But experts at the GSE say they worry that some homeschooled students, especially those from fundamentalist Christian families, may have trouble adjusting to the diversity of a college campus.”

Who are you going to believe?  Me, or your lying eyes?

And of course, no public schooler had adjustment problems.

• Results 1 – 10 of about 464,000 for adjusting to freshman college
• Adjusting to College Life  
  National statistics tell us that less than half of all college students finish their four-year college degrees. Slightly more than half of those who don’t finish leave school before the start of their second year.

In any case, it’s nice to see that homeschooled kids continue to be accepted by Harvard.  Not bad for those following in The Goat Boy’s footsteps almost 25 years later.

Apr 28 2006 in Articles About Homeschooling, Successful Homeschoolers valerie No Comments »