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Homeschoolers on to College: What Research Shows Us

Journal of College Admission, Fall 2004 by Ray, Brian D

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Galloway and Sutton (1997) used academic, cognitive, spiritual, affective-social, and psychomotor criteria for measuring success at a private university. Among other things, they found that homeschooled students held significantly more positions of appointed and spiritual leadership, and had more semesters of leadership service than did those from private schools, and were statistically similar to the public school graduates.

More Articles of Interest: Colleges vying to attract home-schooled students; A Study of Admission Officers' Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward Homeschool...; Homeschool Recruiting: Lessons Learned on the Journey; College admissions adapt for home-schooled teens; First-Year College Performance: A Study of Home School Graduates and...

Although some college and university personnel have shown animosity toward the homeschooling process, it appears that most are now interested in welcoming the home-educated. A recent survey asked many questions of 34 college admission officers in Ohio, who averaged 10 years of experience in college admission work and of whom 88 percent had personal experience working with homeschooled students (Ray, 200Ib). For example, they were asked how home-schooled students at their institution compared to their general student population in terms of academic success. About nine percent said "far more academically successful," 22 percent reported "somewhat more academically successful," 38 percent said "academically about average," zero percent reported "somewhat less academically successful," zero percent said "far less academically successful," and 31 percent said "don't know." On a five-point, strongly agree-strongly disagree scale, the admission officers were nearly symmetrical in their responses to the statement, "As the primary instructors, parents should be recognized as capable of evaluating their student's academic competence in letters of recommendation" (i.e., 32 percent agree, 24 percent neither, and 32 percent disagree). To the item, "The majority of homeschooled students are at least as socially well adjusted as are public schooled students," 44 percent agreed or strongly agreed, 3 5 percent responded "neither," and 21 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed. Likewise, Irene Prue's (1997, 62) nationwide study of college admission personnel revealed that "... homeschoolers are academically, emotionally, and socially prepared to succeed in college."

Several colleges think so well of home-educated students that they have been actively recruiting them for several years (e.g., Boston University, Nyack College). Christopher Klicka's (1998, 3) survey of college admission officers found a Dartmouth College admission officer saying, "The applications [from homeschoolers] I've come across are outstanding. Homeschoolers have a distinct advantage because of the individualized instruction they have received." This individualized instruction, combined with homeschooled students' experience in studying and pursuing goals on their own, may be showing long-lasting effects. Admission officers at Stanford University think they are seeing an unusually high occurrence of a key ingredient, which they term "intellectual vitality," in homeschool graduates (Foster, 2000). They link it to the practice of self-teaching prevalent in these young people, as a result of their homeschool environment.

Homeschoolers on to College: What Research Shows Us

Journal of College Admission, Fall 2004 by Ray, Brian D

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