The Final Road to College...

This will be my final Road to College post. At least for this particular graduate. (Who knows, I may revive it in two years when my second student is ready to leave the nest.)

Allison 2010 Graduation Photos


God has abundantly blessed us with an amazingly wonderful young lady! After 13 years of work, our daughter has turned in her last assignment and will graduate. Pretty cool.

Some things that I've learned from this experience. If your student doesn't know what they want to be, maybe you should skip the whole college mess and just enroll them into a Community College. That is just what we've done. After all the work, she just wanted to continue next door. She's made so many wonderful friends there and she loves most of her teachers. You really can't beat that. She's been promoted at her work and that will allow her to completely pay for her college without debt, which was something that we, her Dad and Mom, really wanted for her. It's a real blessing. It's also wonderful that we'll get two more years with her. After that, she's considering going to a local 4 year college and either commuting or living on campus and working close to school. Either way, she'll be able to pay for her whole college experience without debt and is hoping to pursue a degree in teaching, so that she can become a missionary. We are amazed at where the Lord has lead our daughter!


Another thing we learned, we're starting in 11th grade for our next kids.LOL We're already in the process of enrolling Jon at the local CC for dual enrollment and he will be able to get very close to his AA degree before graduating. (We won't want him to get it because that would interfere with getting scholarships.) It will save him tons on his schooling.

Is there anything that I will do differently with the little kids? Yes.

1. I will make things more fun. They are only young once and the hard stuff comes fast enough without me rushing them into it.

2. I will spend even MORE time on things that they are interested in. No one looks at their younger years, so do we really need to follow a traditional school subject list? No. BUT if they can find their passion in life along with a love for learning, they'll do just fine.

3. I will only do 2 years of highschool with my next batch of kids. The next two years will be for dual-enrollment. They'll have plenty of credits for graduation and it'll give me a break. It'll also give them a chance to get used to college before they have to take a full schedule.

4. I'll make sure that they have many opportunities to serve inside and outside of our home.

So that's it. I hope these posts have helped. I know that I've learned so much over the past year and almost look forward to doing this again in two years.



Blessings,

The Road to College...

Or I should call this one...

The Dreaded FAFSA!!!

It was nice to have a break from college stuff over the Christmas holidays but as the days came closer to January, I began to fret over this next hurtle. Questions began circling around in my head. Should I wait until I had filed my taxes? Should I do an estimate and then revise once our taxes were done? How bad is this really going to be? Will I really want to go back and revise once I had taken the time and effort into completing this form the first time?

LOL

I really shouldn't have worried. Normally, my dh's W2 form comes in very early, but this year he received notice that it wasn't going to be ready until the end of the month. We decided to go ahead and complete the FAFSA and then revise once we got the offical W2. You CAN complete it without your W2, if you can get a hold of your last paycheck statement for the year. Now here's the kicker though. You'll have to pretend to do your taxes first anyway.LOL Could we have waited? Probably but to get the most money from your favorite colleges, you need to get that form in as early as possible. We're on a tight budget and can use all the money that we can get, so we took the chance and filed the FAFSA first.

It only took us about a day to pretend file our taxes, pretend file Allison's, and then complete the FAFSA. Once it was complete, we submitted it and now we are playing the waiting game again. Eric did end up getting his W2 form last weekend and we completed our taxes and then I revised the FAFSA to reflect some minor changes that needed to be fixed. Today, Allison received her W2 form and we filed her taxes. In a few days, I'll revise the FAFSA for the last time and we'll be done. Revising the FAFSA is easy, so don't be afraid of filing early and revising later.

In other news...

Allison completed her classes last semester and received all A's. We're very proud of her and are hoping that it will make a big statement to the colleges that she applied. She is now in her second semester and these classes are much harder for her. We believe that she'll rise to the challenge and leave her senior year with a 4.0 average.

We've also been invited to participate in a local homeschool graduation ceremony. That's another blessing since we weren't sure how we were going to celebrate her graduation. She'll get to walk down the aisle, wear a cap and gown, and celebrate with friends that she made at her college, that are now a part of the church that we're attending. They are also going to do a group order for diplomas and cap and gowns so I'll get to save on shipping. Pretty neat!

Well, I guess that's it for now. The next installment will be about graduation and the final results from all the hard work that we've accomplished this year. Will she go away to college or stay home? Will she get enough money for a 4 year college or go to the local CC? Was the FAFSA worth it or not?

I know that no matter what, that God is in control and that whatever happens next will be His will for Allison. I am thankful that I'm not the one who has to make the decisions. I have done my part, so far and will be glad to see what God has in store for our oldest next year.

Blessings,

The Road to College...

Exciting news here...Allison has been officially accepted into three of the seven colleges that she applied to. Two of the colleges are public and one is private. The private college has offered Allison an 8-9 thousand dollar merit scholarship. That happens to be the highest scholarship they offer! Pretty neat! The only bad thing is, that it is really pennies when you consider the actual yearly cost of going there. On the up side, we fill out the FAFSA in January which will also qualify her for more aid directly from the college and maybe just a teeny tiny bit from the government. She'd really like to go to this college, but we'll have to see where we end up after all the money comes in.

In other news, the kids are signed up for the ACT this weekend. Jon, in particular has been working his rump off in hopes that this will be the last general test he'll need to take. He will still be taking the CLEP and the SAT II in Chemistry this coming Jan-Feb and will also be working toward other SAT II's in the future. He wants to go to Cal-tech, so he needs to work hard.

Allison is finishing up her first semester in college this week and also on Monday of next week. She's hopeful that her grades are A's and that she'll really impress those college recruiters. I'm thankful that she has made a quick and painless adjustment into college. When you homeschool someone from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade, it can be a little nerve-wracking to send them off into the unknown. I hoped that I had prepared her to the best of my ability, but really you never know until that first paper or that first math test comes along and they come through it with a good grade and the confidence to continue on. I'm thankful that God's grace has covered all my short-comings and allowed Allison to blossom in college and in real life. Watching her hold down a job, swim on the swimteam, and take three college classes all at once and do well in each area, makes me proud of who she is becoming and the direction that she has chosen to take.

One thing that has impressed me, is that Allison is really considering her future and how she'd like to get there. She'd love to go to the fancy private college, but is also considering staying here for the next two years to get her AA. She's not closing any doors. Instead she's making sure that the decision she makes won't cause her to leave college with major debt. I think that shows a lot of maturity.

One thing I'm looking forward to, is going back and being just an elementary teacher after this year.LOL Jon will take all of his classes at the CC next year and Allison will be a fulltime graduated college student. I'll be back to homeschooling the littles, with a little guidance counselor thrown in for good measure. What a blessing.LOL

Blessings,

The Road to College...literally.

I'm guessing you all can tell what the next part of the college process is...

Road Trip!

Allison received her first phone call from a college this weekend. We're excited that someone has received all the paperwork, has read it, and still wants us to come and visit.LOL Our next step is to arrange three personal interviews with three different colleges. One is easy, because it's in our town. The other two are spread all over Florida. In fact, we may end up having to do more than these three interviews but these three are the ones that had it as a requirement for their application process for homeschoolers. So...

1. Make sure that the colleges you apply to are ones that you'd like to visit even if you haven't received an official offer from them. Lucky for us, the two out of town ones are on Allison's short list, so they were needing visits anyway, but if one of the lesser colleges that we applied to, asks the same of us, we may just back out of that college.

2. Read the requirements and then figure out if you can actually meet them before applying. Allison is swamped right now and meeting up with three colleges will be a stretch, especially while trying to keep up with school, work, studying for the ACT, and swimming. I'd rather save our money and visit the colleges that she is actually accepted to attend but we knew about these three and will commit to visiting.

3. Don't let your teen get their hopes up while visiting! I mean, these are just more steps to apply, not a guarantee that they will get to go there. Make them wait until you are visiting one that has actually accepted them.lol

4. Take photos and label them so that you can "revisit" if you are accepted to decide if it's the right college for them. That may help narrow things down if you end up accepted to more than 2-3 colleges. (This advice is for people (us) who can't afford to visit 7 different colleges if we are accepted to all of them.) If you've already taken the tour and visited, then only go back if they are numbers 1-3 on your teens list, unless you can afford to visit them all.

Well, I'll update after the visits or if anything else comes us that we forgot to do.LOL

Blessings,

The Road to College...

Or, should I label this one...

What to do while you wait on your teen to get all her ducks in a row.

Anyway, here's an update on our saga...

We have so far turned in three complete college applications with all the extra stuff. The deadline for each of these colleges was November 1st and we accomplished it. Each envelope contained 29 course descriptions, a four page transcript, one had an essay, and another had a recommendation form filled out by her English teacher. We sent each college an official SAT score report from the SAT website also.

Now for the waiting part. Allison filled out all the applications for each of the other four colleges that she's applying to, but she still needs four recommendations and two essays before we can finish those colleges.

We found out that her SAT scores were not as good as we hoped. She increased her scores in each of the different areas but since she didn't study for the test, it isn't enough for her top colleges to award her a scholarship. So plan B is in action. I signed her up for the ACT and she will take it in December. I also signed up for their online study guide for $19.95. By far, the ACT is a more economical choice and I'm hoping that with a little studying, she'll get a good score. She'll need a 29 to get scholarship offers. Luckily, SAT and ACT score deadlines are flexable. Most colleges give you until the end of the school year to get your final scores in. It would be better to get them in sooner, but better scores can mean more money, so we'll keep at it a little longer.

What I've learned...

1. Study for the SAT and ACT early. It's really never too early once your teen is in highschool.

2. Start collecting recommendations from teachers, pastors, and close friends as soon as they have done something. It's better to have them early. Also, you need a lot of them, so don't be shy about asking a teacher for one. You'll need it. That way, you can spread it out and not have one person doing five different ones for five different colleges. They don't like that.lol

3. Start work on college essays in the Jr year. What I've noticed about the essays, is that they all are basically the same. They all want to know WHY your teen would make a good fit at their school OR they want to know what they've learned from some experience that makes them a good fit for their school. Allison wrote one essay during her college class that actually fit most of the college essay question and it has helped tremendously. Now that I know, I'll be working with Jon to get a few good essays in next semester to help with his college applications so that we aren't trying to do everything at once.

Blessings,

The Road to College...pt.3

Transcripts.

Here's what we've done right.

First off, 2 years ago I hired Lee from The HomeScholar to help me with Allison's 9th and 10th grade transcripts. Lee was wonderful. She called me and we discussed Allison's work over that time period and she helped flesh out the transcripts with really good questions. She not only asked about each and every usual subject, she also asked about outside activities, things that Allison liked doing during her free time, and church related things that she did. These questions not only helped Lee, they also helped me to see all that we had accomplished during these two years! It also made me see what to include during the next two years afterwards.

After we had talked, Lee compiled a professional transcript for Allison and sent it to me that day. What I got was three different forms. The first one lists each course by subject. The second lists each course by year. The final paper lists each class title and I added to it by putting textbooks used under each course and I linked each course to the website that sells the course. What was so wonderful about these transcripts was that each one could be easily added to for each consecutive year. In theory, I could add each year as we finished it so that it was fresh in my mind and it would have been quite easy. In reality, I waited until last week to compile the last two years and it was considerably harder.lol

I found Lee's business to be extremely helpful to me. Could I have done it without her help? Possibly. I know that there are many free helps out there these days, but just having someone walk me through the first two years was a tremendous help. She not only helped me flesh out what needed to be put on each transcript, she helped me SEE what transcripts really look like. It is also nice to have actual transcript forms to just enter in the next year's work.

When it was time for me to enter in the next two years worth of school, I purchased Lee's The Easy Truth About Homeschool Transcripts E-Book, plus I also joined the Gold Care Club. I got a bunch of free helps, along with more transcript templates and I also get one free 20 minute phone call with Lee each week for a month. Very nice. Through her website I was able to work through my transcripts without trouble and finished them all in under a week.

What I didn't do well.(lol)

Can we all say Procrastination? I have all of Allison's work, labeled, in notebooks, with her grade sheets added into the books, all on my handy-dandy bookshelves. I really thought it'd be no big deal to enter them into the transcripts on my computer, "at a later date." Boy, was I wrong. It was confusing and hard work to locate every single course at that later date. It was tedious, time consuming, and stressful. I will not do that ever again. That is, of course, after I get Jon's transcripts up to date. (lol)

What I also didn't take into account was what colleges would want in addition to the official transcripts. My big mistake was not going to different college websites to see what kinds of paper trails those popular colleges would expect to see from home school students. Most colleges just want the standard transcripts, along with references, SAT scores, and the college's essay. Not too bad, really. Some of the nicer colleges wanted just a bit more. Of course, being that I didn't actually look on the websites to see if they would want more, I didn't know that they would also want....

Course Descriptions With How We Evaluated Each Course.

Of course Allison decided that her top college pick would be one that needed these dreaded course descriptions. It meant ME going all the way back to 9th grade and writing each and every description, digging out each and every notebook to see each and every grade earned from each and every course. It was almost too much. Out of fear and desperation, I emailed Lee, hoping that she did this service and if I could just email her the transcripts and have HER do it. Money was no object.lol Well, Lee no longer provides this service, but she was a tremendous help. She sent me links all over her website where she showed me how to do course descriptions and even an audio recording called Course Descriptions Demystified. I listened and looked all over her website and then got started.

My first plan of action was to have my Dh make a template for the course descriptions. Looking at Lee's sample, he was able to give me one very quickly. After that, I got started. By far, the first two were the hardest. I began with math, thinking it would be the easiest to find online. I started off looking for course descriptions all over the internet. I looked at the curriculum website (MUS) that I purchased the subject, for their description of the course (there wasn't a good one) and I also looked for table of content links (which they had). I then used a generic course description that I found by googling "pre-algebra course descriptions" and found one that encompassed what the course did. Then I pasted the table of contents page into a section that I labled "Topics included." At the bottom of the page and sometimes on another page, I listed how we graded this course. For this course, I listed Tests, Daily Work, Unit Tests and Final Exam. Can we say TEDIOUS? I did this two more times for Allison's different math courses and then started on Science. Science was a bit easier since I knew what I was doing and it went a tad faster. I am not doing Allison's college dual enrollment courses since we'll be sending those separately once she has offical grades. I do have them listed on her transcripts with a * beside them denoting they were not taken at home.

I was able to do 6 courses yesterday and 5 today. My goal is to finish at the end of this week so I have time to print out all the different copies and allow Allison the time to do her part of the application process on my computer the next week. She has those essays, remember? She also has to work on each application, although only two are due Nov. 1st. We have more time on the rest of them.

So now you know what I've been up to this weekend. If I could share a little advice to anyone just starting this journey, I'd say research 8-10 different colleges, any colleges, to see what they require from homeschoolers and then work towards completing that paperwork right now. It's better to have too much, than not enough when you get to the senior year. It would have made this process a lot easier if I had done my research.

HTH!

The Road to College...pt 2

So, now that Allison is in DE, working as a lifeguard, and swimming for the swimteam at her local highschool, we're all set, right? Wrong! I got about one week off before the next wave hit. Thankfully, it was the week that I got sick.lol

The very next job for me is the dreaded transcripts. Her top pick college is a little persnickity about what they want from homeschoolers. It's do-able but not much fun. Some colleges, were not very homeschool friendly. Allison's most favorite college wouldn't even look at her unless she wanted to take 5 SAT II subtests. Well, we just don't have the time for that. If we had started her Jr. year, then maybe we could have gotten that accomplished, but with time running out, we've decided stick to colleges who appreciate and want homeschoolers.

So, what do those colleges want from us? Well, I'll tell you. Two of the six colleges that she is applying to want our basic transcripts AND a list of all textbooks used AND a detailed course description along with what we expected her to learn from each course. Fun, fun, fun.lol Now, I've been keeping up to date transcripts and reading lists for her highschool years, but not lists of her textbooks or course descriptions or course expectations. I have to admit here that some of her credits didn't have traditional textbooks. Will she get in anyway? I guess we'll find out.

I've been compiling all of this for the past week and I have at least 2 weeks left until I'll be done. I'm glad to know what I need in the future for Jon though. I'll be compiling these lists as soon as I'm done with Allison.

What is Allison doing during all this? I'll tell you. She has a very important job right now. In addition to keeping her grades up, juggling her job and swimming, she is now in charge of completing college applications and writing 6-12 essays before the end of the year. She needs to complete 2-4 before the end of the month and the others before Jan 1st. She's also collecting references from two college professors, one Dr, and her employer and, as if that isn't enough, she's also in charge of writing a resume of her work experience which is another requirement of her top college pick. Crazy, isn't it?!! Makes my job look easy.lol

I talked about having three plans in place for Allison to accomplish her goals in my last post. I think I'll go over them here and now.

Plan A: Allison goes to a four year college on scholarship. Either full scholarship or part with money from us and from her job.

Plan B: Allison stays home and goes to community college while working so that she can save up for her 4 year college after her AA degree. We will help with expenses. She could also transfer as a transfer student after she has enough credits as long as she stays in Florida. They all have articulation agreements between the local cc's and all Fl 4 year colleges. This might get her in the persnickity college that she'd love to go to.

Plan C: ROTC scholarship to a four year college. She'd have to sign on for 8 years, but they would cover all expenses.

So far, that's what we're up to. I'll keep you posted on the next steps as they come up. For now, I'm off to work on those darned transcripts.lol

Blessings,

The Road to College...

My dh thinks that I should document what we did Allison's senior year to get her into college. I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous to write this all down. There are NO guarantees that we'll even get her into a four year college. Although that may be the case, I will not consider it a failure if she ends up at our local community college for her AA degree. That, in itself is an accomplishment worthy of cheering and rejoicing. I'm thankful that Allison has goals and we have 3 plans to accomplish those goals. My plan is to update the blog throughout the process, so this will be more of a series instead of one long post.LOL

Now, on to part one...

The first thing we did to help Allison look more marketable to colleges this year, was to enroll her in the Dual Enrollment program at our local community college. Most colleges that I researched were looking for some outside accountability, somewhere. Did it have to be college course work? No, but for us it was the best option. Colleges want to know that your student can do the work and they like to see that your student can complete work from an outside teacher. We happen to live right next door to our local community college, so it was a shoo-in for ease and access. If you are looking to have your student enroll in the DE program, start early! It was a lot of paperwork and we ended up walking a lot of it through all the different channels.

Something else to consider is outside work. Colleges like to see responsible young adults that can manage work and school. Finding a good part-time job can help your student look responsible AND that employer makes a great reference letter later on to your top college pick. Allison has worked part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer for two years now. She's proven herself responsible, hard working, AND able to balance work, school, and extra-curricular activities.

Work and school are great but without any fun your student looks a little boring on that application. Now it's time to look into some fun activities that your student might be good at. Allison picked swimming for our local highschool. She loves the water, it's an extension of her job and it shows that she has interests outside of school. She's working extremely hard to lower her times right now and if she can get them low enough, she may even qualify for college sports scholarships. If not, then she still has interests to put on that all important transcript.

All of the things listed above, had to be completed before the school year began. Surprisingly enough, the swimteam was most important to set up before the year began. Because of rules by the FHSAA, if she had decided after the year began, she would have been ineligible to join the team. We barely got her in and it was dicey that she'd get to stay in. She proclaimed her decision two weeks before the year began thankfully.

Once the year began, her primary job was to keep her grades up and learn how to juggle all of her outside commitments. It was tough at first but she has really thrived in this environment.

On the college front, she decided to take a full load for DE. She has three classes consisting of College Algebra, Spanish 1, and English Composition. Not even half way through her 1st semester, she had to decide and pick her next semester's classes. Things move quickly in college, we've found.lol She picked Spanish 2, Elementary Statistics, and Chemistry 1 for her next semester. These are all classes she needs for college and for highschool graduation. So far, she's doing wonderfully in her classes. She loves her teachers and has made some friends. It's been a good fit for her.

Next, we had to begin to study and plan for her SAT. Yes, we really needed to start this much earlier but since we're new at this this is when we began. Allison took her first SAT in her Jr year. She scored well enough to enter the DE program at any level that she wanted to. They allowed her free reign of any classes. But her scores are not that great for someone who would like a scholarship at a 4 year college, so we signed her up for the October test date. We wanted the scores to be in before the November 1st early action deadline for her top pick colleges. If she did well, then I think she'll be accepted by her favorite colleges. If not, then we'll sign up for the next available test date and study harder.lol

So those are the things that we've already done and Allison is currently doing. Next I'll talk about what I'm currently doing and what she's gearing up to do.lol

Blessings,