Where can my student find helpful information about writing a college application or scholarship application essay?

The College Board offers some great tips on essay writing, geared specifically towards application and scholarship essays. Write Guide provides an individualized writing course for homeschooled students in grades four through twelve. You can review sample application essays at Just Colleges to see what other students have written. My 10 Step Guide to Stress Free College Planning has a whole section devoted to essay preparation, and I wrote a post on essay writing secrets which you can read here.

A couple other resources that I use in my own writing are Copy Blogger and Men with Pens. Although both sites are written for the blogger or copywriter, they offer some great tips and resources for improving your overall writing.

Do you have any other tips or suggestions that have proven useful in essay writing?

The Affective Domain describes the way people react emotionally. There are five levels which move from the lowest to highest. They are:

1. Receiving: the student passively pays attention. Without this level no learning can occur.
2. Responding: the student actively participates in the learning process.
3. Valuing: the student attaches a value to something.
4. Organizing: the student can put together different values, information, and ideas by comparing, relating and elaborating on the information learned.
5. Characterizing: the student holds a particular value or belief that now exerts influence on his behavior.

The Psychomotor Domain describe the ability to physically manipulate a tool or instrument. These objectives tend to focus on change of behavior and/or skills. Bloom never created subcategories for skills in the psychomotor domain, although others did so later.

The Cognitive Domain revolves around knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking. There are six levels in this taxonomy, moving from lowest to highest, with each one building upon the previous.  They are:

1. Knowledge: can exhibit memory of previously learned materials by recalling basic facts, terms, concepts and answers.
2. Comprehension: demonstrates understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating main ideas.
3. Application: using new found knowledge. Solve problems by applying knowledge, facts, techniques and rules.
4. Analysis: examine and break information into parts or categories by identifying motives or causes. Can make inferences and locate evidence to support generalizations.
5. Synthesis: compile information together to create something new or develop an original idea about something.
6. Evaluation: The critical thinking stage.  Present and defend opinions by making judgments about information, validity of ideas or quality of work based on a set of criteria.

So, how can this information help you in your homeschooling efforts to prepare your child for college?  Simple.  Most people intuitively know these steps are taken in the learning process, but haven’t thought through all of them and how they pertain to each other.  Knowing this, it can help you to better prepare your student by understanding the steps that need to be taken so that he can more efficiently and effectively learn the necessary information that will prepare him for college and life.  Any thoughts?  Are you already using a similar process?

Note:  Some information was taken from Wikipedia.

When should we begin visiting college campuses?

This is a great question, and one that many parents neglect to ask. It’s never too early to start visiting potential college campuses. But before you hop in the car or jump on the plane to check out your child’s new home and learning environment over the next four years, a couple of preliminary steps should be taken to save both time, money, and headaches.

First off, sit down with your student and make a list of what you’re both looking for in a college. Write down everything you want in a college or university, beginning with the most important aspects, (such as academic major, religious affiliation, location, etc.) and ending with the smallest of details (cafeteria food selection, campus aesthetics, etc.). Leave nothing off the list, no matter how small the detail. After you feel everything you could possibly want in a college is listed, arrange this list numerically in order of importance, with 1 being the most important criteria, 50 being the least, etc.

After you’ve finished, take out another piece of paper and being writing down a list of negatives, those things you’d prefer the college didn’t have; everything from major issues such as things that would absolutely keep your child from attending to smaller things, such as minor inconveniences. Many of the items written on this list may be the opposite of those on your first list. Do the same with this list as the first, arrange all the items numerically in order of importance, with 1 being a complete deal-breaker, to 50 being a minor inconvenience.

(You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned anything about the cost of tuition in your lists. Well, it’s because the actual cost can vary considerably, depending upon public or private school, in-state or out-of-state, amount of scholarships won, expected family contribution, and grants and loans awarded. Since all these variables will not be known until after your student has applied senior year, look past this criteria for the time being.)

Once both lists are completed, you should have a pretty good idea of what qualities to both look for and avoid in a potential university for your child. Now it’s time to research. Hop online and begin searching for schools that meet your criteria. If location is important, you can perform a radius search by location. If religious affiliation matters, you can search for schools using this criteria. A couple of resources you may find helpful are the University of Texas list of U.S. Universities, the Wikipedia list of American Institutions, and the NCES college navigator. Use these resources to find potential schools, then navigate to their websites to learn more about each school.

There are several websites that offer virtual campus tours. Although not a substitute for a physical, on-campus visit, they can be another tool to use narrowing the list of possible choices. A couple of good options are You University TV and Collegiate Choice. These are two of the most popular options for virtual tours, filmed by outside companies, so there is less of a subjective bias in the presentation.

Another great option to learn more about individual schools are college fairs. These are events where college admissions representatives from various schools across the country set up a booth or table in a large venue to provide information on their institution to potential students and their families. I have personally attended hundreds of these events, both large and small. Since there are typically multiple schools represented at these fairs, it’s best to make a list of questions to ask the admissions representative before arriving. That way, you can systematically evaluate each school based upon your predetermined criteria. The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) has a list of these events across the country.

There are now virtual college fairs being offered, where you never have to leave home to learn about possible schools. check out Virtual College Fairs.com to learn more about this up-and-coming alternative.

These resources should help you to make a list of potential colleges and universities to consider. With this new list of possible candidates, you and your student should begin visiting them at the very latest during junior year. Freshman or sophomore year is ideal for a first-time visit, since if a college visited during this time meets your criteria, you’ll want to schedule a return visit during senior year to confirm its viability.

There are several ways to visit a college campus as a potential student. The first one is an unofficial or self-guided tour. You and your student may decide to visit the campus sporadically by yourselves, asking questions of passers-by and taking in the scenery and campus activity to get a feel for the university. This can be done both during the academic school year and during the summer, although the benefits of doing so are higher during the school year, since most college campuses are drastically different places when school is out of session.

The second type visit is a school preview day or open house. During this type of event, which is usually hosted on the weekend, the student and family may be invited to participate in several campus activities, take a guided tour of campus, meet with the admissions staff, professors and students, attend a sporting event, concert, or theatrical play, eat in the cafeteria, etc. This may or may not be an overnight event, depending on the school.

The third type of campus visit is an official overnight stay in a dormitory with another student. This is usually scheduled on a week day, so your student can attend a class or two in order to gain a feel for collegiate and academic life. Your student will also eat in the cafeteria, attend campus events, work out in the gym, etc. Often times overnight campus visits are scheduled in conjunction with preview days or open houses.

The last type of campus visit is an unofficial overnight stay where your child stays in the dorms with a friend or relative already attending the college. Since it is unofficial, there are no scheduled events to attend, therefore, your student may get a more realistic idea of just what the university is all about.

When should you not visit college campuses? Holidays, fall and spring break, exam weeks, and other dates that the college might be closed. (It never hurts to call the admissions office and ask when the best and worst times to visit are.)

Well, originally this question was about WHEN to begin visiting college campuses, not HOW to go about it. Hopefully though, by answering the how, I’ve made the when easier to understand!

Can my child earn a diploma of some sort, or is the only option to have a certificate stating that he passed the GED?

If you decide to use a 3rd-party curriculum, they will most likely award a high school graduation diploma. Many of these “schools” are fully accredited, so the college or university chosen should accept this without issue. Since practically every school now requires the ACT or SAT to be taken, the need for an accredited curriculum has been greatly diminished. You may even choose to award your own “home-made” diploma. Nothing wrong with this at all. Many parents do this and have no problems.

Taking the GED is an option, but one I would only recommend as a last resort. There is a stigma attached to it that will probably never change. Someone with a GED as their only credential screams “high school dropout.” If the college in question lists the GED as a requirement for homeschool admissions, I would look for another school.

We have named our Home School. Is it fine to use this name on any documents asking for school name, or is it best to include that it is a Home School?

By all means, use the name which you have given your home school, as it adds an element of credibility. Depending upon the state in which you live, by doing this, you may actually be considered a “private school,” and this tends to make the reviewing university more lenient.

Kristen, thanks for the great questions!

20 years later, the class was studied again. The 3% that had specific goals at graduation had amassed more wealth in the 20 years than the other 97% combined! Goals make that type of difference.

What’s stopping you from writing specific goals? Goals will make all the difference in your life! Turn your dreams and aspirations into specific, measurable, and written goals. You will achieve more.

Make sure to set goals and time lines for all the areas of your life, physical, mental, personal, spiritual, social, family, financial, and career. Dan Miller from 48 Days has a great worksheet on goal setting. Check it out here.

When it comes to preparing for college, goal setting is extremely important. Having a clear, concise plan is essential to success, and this is a skill that will serve students well throughout life. Public and private schools have a plan for their students, unfortunately, most often it is the opposite of the plan that we would prefer for them. Nothing wrong with creative, unstructured learning, sometimes this can be the best kind. But in order to accomplish goals and objectives, there must be a method to the madness, some type of order and structure that will facilitate the best learning environment.

Proper planning prevents poor performance. Begin to map out where you want your student to be during 12th grade and work backwards. Through this simple process, it makes the end goal much more realistic and plausible.