But What about College?

I loved college. My school was a beauty, with a rambling, finely manicured campus lorded over by old-growth trees and darkly Gothic buildings with leaded windows. The library looked and felt like a cathedral to the life of the mind; it was impossible to enter without hushing your voice in reverence. I loved padding around the dorm with my friends or holing up with a pile of books, hopped up on caffeine in an all-night studying binge. To me the yearly course catalog was as enticing as a box of chocolates - the class descriptions sounded that good. Now let's see...what will it be this semester: Italian Cinema (dark hazelnut ganache) or 19th-Century Novel (raspberry fudge truffle)?

Recently at the Denim Jumper a homeschooling mom wondered how the rest of us felt about college regarding our kids. Was college consistent with a homeschooling ethos that's often distrustful of big faceless institutions and bureaucracy? Would sending our kids there be a kind of selling out? And if we wanted to our kids to pursue college, did we worry about how homeschooling might affect their chances of getting into a range of schools, as they would have no formal grades or class rankings to distinguish them?

My concern is with the latter question. I absolutely do want college in my daughter's future - only if she is willing, naturally, though I will strongly encourage her to go. I'm sure it's true that universities can get bogged down in bureaucracy and other nonsense (I experienced this in graduate school, at an institution much larger than my cozy liberal arts college). Yet college can be just the place to challenge the so-called establishment. To me, college stood for freedom, creativity, original thinking, autonomy, joy in learning. In short, it was everything that high school was not. College was where I "unschooled" all the BS of my prior schooling.

The other day I called the admissions office at my alma mater, Vassar College, and asked about their policy on homeschooling. It turns out they don't have an official policy; they welcome homeschooled applicants and recently accepted a "handful" for the incoming class. But they do have a few caveats. They want to see that a homeschooled candidate has covered the same kind of material as a conventionally schooled applicant, with no one subject neglected, like math or science. And the applicant has to be "competitive," whatever that means. They mentioned SAT or ACT scores, which I've heard weigh more heavily for homeschoolers.

Interestingly, the admissions officer told me that she's seen an increase recently in homeschooled applicants. Though before receiving my call, she'd never heard from the mother of a two-year-old prospective homeschooler. I laughed. It was true - I was jumping the gun. In the name of research, of course.

homeschooling
college
Vassar College