Children who were homeschooled doing well in college?

Question

If you are homeschooled from 7-12 grade, and you are not one of those homeschooled students who is like a genius, you are just average. So then you get accepted into college. How will that student do well if they don't have any skills in taking notes during lectures, getting around campus, and communicating with other students? I'm not trying to be offensive i'm just wondering and giving an example.

Answer 1

Most students I know didn't go to half their lectures, instead they went to see the Dead play on the green in Berkeley on acid.  Then they went back to Kloine Court and had s*x on the pool table and monday 5 minutes before class they wrote a term paper.

As long as you're into beer, s*x and music you will communicate with other students.

My friend, who was in a 600 student auditorium Calculus course at UCLA, once approached his teacher and told her he was one of her students.  Her reply was:

Oh, ok.  If you say so!

You can buy your lecture notes (some teachers post them on their web sites), buy your term papers and never set foot into most of the lower division courses and squeek out with a C which is an average grade and students have been doing this for over 60 years now.

Answer 2

Many homeschooled high schoolers have classroom experience, either in a co op class or in a college (concurrent enrollment or straight college) class.  Also, their parents tend to drill study habits into them at a young age, and they tend to be pretty independent by sometime in middle school.  I teach both middle and high school students at a local co op, and the kids that I have are more than prepared for a college courseload.

Getting around campus might be something new for those who haven't taken college classes...but honestly, I went to a high school of less than 400 students, and I learned where everything was on my college campus before classes started.  They're not kept in the house all day, they live lives out in society.  They get around the mall, around their job, and around town - getting around the college campus isn't really that different.

Answer 3

Do you think homeschool kids don't talk to anybody?    You ask if they have problems communicating with other students.  I get so tired of that myth.  My kids are in a lot of different programs, classes, etc. They have friends galore and "communicate" with other students on a regular basis.  LOL

Taking notes during a lecture may be new for some but it isn't a hard skill to learn so that wouldn't be a big deal.  Getting around a campus is something that all new students to a university learn when they get there.  I'm not sure why that would be such a big deal.  

Homeschool kids tend to be very self-motivated and want to be at university so learning what they need to learn in order to make it a success isn't too hard.

A lot of highschool kid take college courses during highschool so they've got one step ahead right there.

Answer 4

I actually went to public schools, I have a lot of home school friends who have gone to college and done extremely well. I don't know how much this helps, but I heard that studies show that home schooled students do better communicating with adults than public school students. I wouldn't worry too much about it, except to remember to keep a good work ethic.

Answer 5

Do a little research and you will find the astounding (to some) answer to your question.

Here is a quote from the article I reference:

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Title:

Colleges Coveting Home-Schooled Students

Subtitle:

Colleges aggressively competing for home-schoolers in quest for best students

Home-schooled students _ whose numbers in this country range from an estimated 1.1 million to as high as 2 million _ often come to college equipped with the skills necessary to succeed in higher education, said Regina Morin, admissions director of Columbia College.

Such assets include intellectual curiosity, independent study habits and critical thinking skills, she said.

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You will NOT find any articles that say:

Homeschooled college students unable to take notes.

Homeschoolers lost on campus - rescue teams still searching

Homeschoolers confused by other students talking to them

---

Hmmm.... I think the subtitle says it all!

Colleges aggressively competing for home-schoolers in quest for best students

Read the article and become a bit more enlightened.

Answer 6

I was homeschooled from K-12th grade, and had absolutely no problem transitioning to college. I graduated from a junior college first, taking with me a 4.0 GPA and 2 prestigious awards from my major, and am going to graduate with a B.A. in May, still maintaining my 4.0 GPA. Miraculously enough, I didn't just practice homeschooling, I did "unschooling," meaning I read maybe 2 textbooks throughout my K-12 years.

As far as getting around campus, there are maps everywhere, and there was no difference between me trying to find my way around and other first time freshmen trying to find there way around. As far as taking notes goes, let's face it, it's not rocket science.

Most importantly, my communication skills were actually strengthened thanks to unschooling. As almost everyone has commented, homeschooled kids don't live in a bubble - they talk to people, interact, live in the world. Not only was I able to relate to my peers, but I was also able to effectively relate to my instructors, which is something I saw other students struggle to do. Because I spent my days socializing with people of all ages, rather than only people in my age group (which is what happens in public school), I was friendly and at ease with professors, while still being respectful.

College students need to be incredibly self motivated, because in college professors don't care whether you show up or not, or even if you test well (much different from high school), and since I have always been in charge of my education, this was nothing new to me.

Unschooling was a valuable and irreplaceable part of my current success, and did not hold me back at all.

Answer 7

My son has always been home schooled.  This would have been his Junior year in High School but we enrolled him in college.   His 1st semester he took Calculus, Chemistry, Freshman English and Racquetball.   His grades in order were A-, B+, B-, B+.  When he finishes he will have taken all the Jr. Colleges 5 highest math classes, their 3 highest Chemistry and 3 highest Physics classes.  He will never get a high school diploma.  He will skip strait to an Associates of Applied Science.  

His discipline comes from being self motivated, not peer/teacher driven.  He likes to have fun (snowboard, music, basketball, friends, etc) but he can see the bigger picture.  He can carry on a conversation of equal ease with anyone from a young kid (he has smaller siblings) to any adult on most any subject.  Public Indoctrinated kids only deal with their peers and typically have no idea how to talk to adults (and adults usually have no idea what they are trying to say) or the where-with-all to deal with younger kids.   Adult friends of mine are always commenting on how all four of my kids can talk with them and how rare that is.  Usually they are lucky to get 2 words out of them.

Seems to me the problem is turning too many ill prepared public schooled kids out into the world where they have to deal with adults and are no longer have a day planed for them.  No wonder Microsoft and Boeing and most high tech companies are having to fill many of their engineering and science jobs with over seas workers (and it's not for lower wages).  On the flip side we have to fill more and more of our manual labor jobs with alien worker because local kids won't do that work.   I could go on and on.  suffice to say Home Schooling will be the a big reason that keeps this country on top.  You will probably work for several in your lifetime.

I have friends who have let their home schooled kids go to high school.  Most find the atmosphere juvenile.  Too much nonsense going on in class instead of learning.

Answer 8

Homeschoolers still leave their house. They still have basic orientation skills like everyone else. They get around their neighborhood, their city, the grocery store, the mall, the library, community college campuses they've been to (many enter college early in duel enrollment), the park, possibly a church, the community center, sports complexes, dance/music/art studios, university campuses they may have visited for special programs or camps, the co-op building if they use one... It's not like they only know how to get around their own house. They go to college and learn the campus just like everyone else.

As for note taking, homeschooling gives a student the opportunity to discover their learning style. We still take notes out of our textbooks, or off of educational videos/programs, or at co-op classes, or in duel-enrollment, or at community lessons (again, art, music, dance, cooking, riding, fencing, sports), from online lessons, from library programs, educational programs or camps, classes or lectures at museums or science centers, etc. We learn what works best for us. And that doesn't mean a teacher told us exactly how to copy the notes and we did it. It means homeschoolers can discover through trial and error whether they are visual learners and should use diagrams or flow charts and color-code things, or if they are audio learners and would do well to record lectures and write key notes in a rhythmic sort of way to aid in memorization, or if they need to organize things in lists with short, simple wording, or if they need to write things out in complete sentences, or if they learn by doing and need to try the things talked about, write examples, or memorize throught he act of rewriting notes a second time. Homeschoolers know how they learn best. That's usually one of the key reasons they homeschool.

You also seem concerned about communication. Well, unless a homeschooler spends their entire childhood curled up under a cardboard box or locked in their bedroom, they will have no problem at all communicating with both students AND PROFESSORS alike. Despite myth, homeschoolers do learn how to socialize. Some may argue that their cousin's daughter's neice's father's sisters were all homeschooled and were "so shy" or "so quiet and antisocial". A shy child is a shy child. Believe it or not, there are shy kids in public school too who never grow out of it. Regardless of where a child is educated, if they're shy and in a shell, the parents need to make an effort to pull them out of it. The school wont do that. If anything the 30-something rambunctious kids all grouped by age and academic level will only intimidate the shy child even more. It will always fall on the PARENTS to see that a shy child gets over shyness. But that's beyond the point. Homeschoolers do not spend their entire day and night cooped up in their houses. They make friends in the neighborhood, friends on the playground, friends with parent's friend's kids... They interact with others on sports teams, in co-op, in support groups, in duel-enrollment, in community classes (dance, art, music, drama, band, swimming, riding, fencing--this list gets longer each time I write it, doesn't it) at work if they have jobs, while volunteering, at camps, on field trips to museums or science centers or historica sights, on vacation in the summer, at the mall, at the youth center, in church if they attend one. Like any other living, breathing individual who sees the light of day on a regular basis (this including everyone who isn't a hermit or terminally ill) homeschoolers see and meet and COMMUNICATE with people EVERYWHERE and ALL THE TIME. And not just with other students--others their age. Homeschoolers aren't herded into age-segragated pens for the bulk of their waking hours each day. They learn to affectively communicate with adults as well which may give them an edge when it comes to communicating needs, questions, concerns, ideas, and general comments to a professor or administrator. Without a socially-programmed age barrier, it's a lot easier to communicate with a superior in a mature, confident manner. Professors especially tend to respect that, and the best thing you can do to make your college experience a good one is to earn the respect of your professors.

I hope this helped to explain some things. If not, feel free to message me with any more questions or concerns you may have about homeschoolers entering college, or homeschooling in general.

Answer 9

My boyfriend is now a sophomore in college and was homeschooled all his life along with 3 brothers and a sister.

He is doing well.  Note-taking is a learned skill, yes, but how many kids in public school really learn to take notes?  I doubt any of them, because I'm a senior in public high school and 99% of all of my teachers over the 12 years have given handouts where the students fill in the blanks for notes.

As far as getting around campus, that's a bit of an insult.  I mean... you go to class.  How difficult is it?  If the person can speak and walk, I don't see how being homeschooled will affect this.

And communication... it's called... opening your mouth and talking.  Homeschooled children actually have FAR better communication skills than their public school counterparts.

So, if you are truly curious, you should look up statistics about homeschooling.  Do some research.   Although, I do realize that public school kids really aren't ever required to do their own research completely on their own.

Answer 10

The girl currently dating my son was homeschooled through 12th grade.  She is now a Junior/senior in college, and has just been accepted to a dental school in Los Angeles.

Her college GPA?  4.0.

Smart kid, I think!