How To Save Your Sanity During College Applications
It’s December 29, 2016.
I’ve been working on college applications for my homeschooled twin sons since June 2016.
Technically, if you count when I started to mentally work on it, it’s been two years…since December 15, 2014… the day my daughter got her acceptance from her first choice school.
Just about all negotiable parts of life have been put on hold.
I’ve barely cleaned my house, online Chipotle ordering has become my best friend, and all our clothes are clean but are in piles on the sofa and will remain there.
It has been unbelievably stressful, time-consuming and I am so glad I never have to do this again.
If your child attends a public school, I’m sure the whole process feels so crazy and overwhelming because there are so many different people involved and so many moving parts.
If you are a homeschooling parent, you at least have less people to juggle, but the majority of the work falls onto you. You need to create the transcript and all the different parts of the Secondary School report. It is daunting!
And as I sit here in desperation and agitation, one thing came to mind.
Keep Notes!
From parent to parent, if I could give you one piece of advice for your high school child, it would be to keep meticulous notes!
For the public schooler, starting from 8th grade, I would start to keep a record of all outside activities. What the activity entails, any special or particular responsibilities, how many hours were spent per week (<– SO important).
Basically, imagine if you were asked to describe in detail, what you did and how you did it ten years down the road. What information would you need to properly convey that? Not only will this prevent stress when you are filling out the Common App, it will also make it so easy to write up an activity resume later.
For the homeschooling parent, you have a great deal more work in front of you.
You will obviously need to keep a record of all classes taken taken each year. Assign grades. You should also think about what your grading scale is and record that.
For each class, record all subjects covered, labs completed (if applicable), curricula and books used, who the teacher was (if it is a third party teacher and record her qualifications). Record how many hours spent per week with the teacher or class and how much time student spent alone.
You should also keep a record of all activities like I stated above for public school students.
It is also helpful to keep a book log.
I called mine a Literature Log. It was nothing more than a Word document where I listed every book my student had read since the start of high school. And please, make sure that the majority you record is quality literature. Harry Potter doesn’t count!
Even if you are unsure of what to record, start your research now as to what the Common App requires from homeschoolers and start recording that information. Better to have too much and not need it than to scramble to put it together.
What colleges and universities want will vary, but when you can offer excellent detail, scholarship opportunities open up.
What has surprised me this year is how some things have changed since my daughter applied and that was only two years ago! For my daughter, I started my college research when she was in seventh grade (yes, I was paranoid I would screw up) and kept it up every year, confirming and validating information. So by the time she applied, I was ready.
After she got in, I was so burned out and didn’t bother doing any research during my boys’ junior year…ugh and I’m paying for it now.
Anyway, Christmas has come and gone. Other than having meals with our families, we have done nothing to celebrate it. Now New Years is coming up and most likely it will be spent sending out applications :(.
But all this is ending soon!
Then the waiting game begins…
