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pmeilaen
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 7:15am | IP Logged
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As a foreigner, I'm trying to understand the "transcript issue." If I enroll my son in a few basic courses for high school (with the option of getting a diploma), but still add my own courses in subjects like German, art, music, Greek, French, etc., how do I do the transcripts then? I mean when we apply for college, do I put all the courses together or do I just write down the ones I did on my own and let the other institutions provide their transcripts directly? What if you throw in some college courses as part of your high school experience? I don't want to add my own courses where we enroll because it makes things more complicated, expensive, and restrictive, but I do like my son to have the exposure of being graded by someone else and having to fulfill requirements from someone else. (That's why I would like him to be enrolled for some courses). I hope that this makes sense  written by somebody who only has a higher degree from the American education system, but hasn't gone through high school or first four years of college here.
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Eva
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 7:43am | IP Logged
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Can't wait to here Eva.
BTW, is it STAA that your ds would be signed up with?
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pmeilaen
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 8:03am | IP Logged
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Kristie 4 wrote:
BTW, is it STAA that your ds would be signed up with?
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Kristie, I wish we knew! We go back and forth between different options including STAA. It's not an easy choice. 
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 8:35am | IP Logged
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No it isn't! 
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 11:36am | IP Logged
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My oldest took college classes while in high school. Once she was officially enrolled as a dual-enrollment student (she started at 14 on an unofficial basis, with a professor who just let her into his class), she did have a record at the college, and when she was applying to colleges, we had the college send her transcript for those classes.
Looking at her transcript from one of those years, I see that I did include her college class (Latin) on our own transcript. I think my reasoning behind this was that it would be useful to have one coherent record of everything she studied, rather than making the admissions staff piece together what she'd done in high school from several different sets of records.
What we actually sent to all the colleges she applied to (Mount St. Mary's, Benedictine College, Belmont Abbey College, and University of Dallas, all of whom accepted her with scholarships; she just finished her freshman year at UD):
1. a standard-format transcript, listing all her work for the four years of high school, with credits and GPA (we use this program, which formats and computes and does it all for you. This I considered to be her "at-a-glance" college-admissions record. They could look at this transcript and see, quickly and easily, what she had done, how many credits she'd completed, and what her grades had been.
2. a narrative transcript. I checked with admissions departments, and all of the above colleges indicated that a longer, narrative-style transcript would be not only acceptable, but helpful. This isn't always the case, but for these schools, it was. For this transcript, I wrote a brief description of each course she had taken, including the books we had used and any particular activities she had completed (I noted research papers done, whether a class had been "writing-intensive," or whatever). **Where applicable, I also included the information that a given class had been taught by someone other than me: a co-op, a college class, etc.**
3. an official transcript from the college where she had taken classes. We just submitted a standard transcript request, and the college sent the transcripts directly to the institutions we had indicated.
I don't want to make a general prescription about what is the Best Thing to Do in all circumstances, but this is what we did, and it worked. It's worth remarking that lots of admissions departments seem to be kind of disorganized, to one degree or another, and presenting an application with *all* your course information in one document is probably a very wise thing, though you can still submit transcripts from other institutions with that, as substantiation of what you've put on your one main document. As long as your information is clear and easy to process, I think you're good.
Hope this helps. I'm interested to hear how others have approached this, too.
Sally
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 1:29pm | IP Logged
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Here's what our narrative transcript looked like, by the way. It was long. I think we must have been asked for detail.
UD uses the Common Application, which does have a special section for homeschoolers, with a form for filling out a detailed transcript. Their admissions department went back and forth over whether we had to fill that out, since we'd sent this narrative transcript; in the end we did fill it out, which was kind of re-inventing the wheel, and if I had it to do again, I'd just fill out the form and not send the narrative transcript.
Further thought: if your child will actually be receiving a diploma from an accredited source, *they* will want to be sure that your child has fulfilled all requirements to their satisfaction before granting a diploma. That means that you would either do their courses or have them sign off on what they would consider to be an acceptable substitute (eg, your German course instead of theirs). If they're granting the diploma, then one way or another all of your child's coursework will be a part of their records and on their transcript.
My earlier answer was based on the assumption that you'd be doing *some* classes with the accredited program, as part of *your* overall program. I guess at the end of the day, how you handle transcripts largely depends on who will grant your child's diploma: an outside entity, or you.
Sally
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Kristie 4
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged
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Awesome Sally- loved the narrative transcript and the online reporting. This will be my life this summer (or at least part of it  )!!!
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pmeilaen
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 4:37pm | IP Logged
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Sally, that has been quite helpful. Thanks so much.
SallyT wrote:
Further thought: if your child will actually be receiving a diploma from an accredited source, *they* will want to be sure that your child has fulfilled all requirements to their satisfaction before granting a diploma. That means that you would either do their courses or have them sign off on what they would consider to be an acceptable substitute (eg, your German course instead of theirs). If they're granting the diploma, then one way or another all of your child's coursework will be a part of their records and on their transcript.
My earlier answer was based on the assumption that you'd be doing *some* classes with the accredited program, as part of *your* overall program. I guess at the end of the day, how you handle transcripts largely depends on who will grant your child's diploma: an outside entity, or you.
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My main problem was how to put everything together when you get a diploma from one of the Catholic homeschool programs, but also do your own classes. Most Catholic homeschool programs don't require subjects like German, French, Greek, but offer Latin. We have been doing all those languages (including Latin) so far and want to keep them going. However, when you ask Catholic homeschool programs about adding those courses, most of them require a fee, detailed lesson plans, or more. Since theses courses are normally not necessary to get a diploma from them, I don't feel like I have to add them. Also, like with your family, my husband is a professor and we can have our children take college classes once they are 16. So I probably will have a high school diploma, but more in addition, and I wanted to have all things appear together! Does this make sense? I wasn't quite sure if you could write your own transcript when you have an official high school diploma as well.
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SallyT
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| Posted: May 14 2012 at 8:08pm | IP Logged
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Hm. In your case some kind of narrative addendum might be a good thing. If you had an accredited diploma, you wouldn't have to explain every single course -- we did that because ours was a DIY kind of deal -- but you could attach a short narrative diploma explaining "enrichment" that you did on the side. And if your kids can do dual enrollment via your husband's college, then you can have the college send transcripts for those courses. That's doubly useful, because then they may be able to opt out of some requirements. My daughter had her language requirement done by the time she got to college -- her Belmont Abbey credits in intermediate-level Latin transferred, and that was that. That has opened up her schedule quite a lot.
Sally
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pmeilaen
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| Posted: May 28 2012 at 2:16pm | IP Logged
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Thank you, Sally. So it doesn't seem to be as complicated as I thought it would be  . Thanks again for your help.
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Kristie 4
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Hey Sally, I am looking at that site you used for your transcript and have a question: I am making up my ds's transcript as he graduates in a few months (YIKES!) and I wondered if it would still work to use that site for a transcript even though I haven't been logging work into it for the past four years? I don't know if that question makes sense?
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: College Transcripts
