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Transcript Workshop Sources

Basic Pages are the source pages from which the websites following it come.
Contents of pages or parts of contents are included. Links are included for all.
 
Basic Page: 1) 
 
HSLDA Homeschooling thru High School
 
Newsletter/archives
 
Basic Page: 2)
 
 
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Course Numbers and Transcript Details

Dateline: 3/13/02
by Shirley Minster
 
As an educational consultant and director of a private school, I have read and prepared hundreds of high school transcripts over the past 23 years and have seen a wide range of notations, as one would imagine. There are some important pieces that should always be included when preparing a transcript for a college.
 
Include the specific name of the course, not the text title: for instance, English 9 or Algebra I. The place for the text title(s) would be in a portfolio, not on the transcript.
 
Course numbers are not necessary for high school courses. In fact, they may cause confusion for the college admissions people. Instead, use AP (Advanced Placement) if such a course was taken or Coll (College Prep) is the course was that level. If your child took an actual college course, use the course number ALONG WITH the actual title from the college, the grade achieved, and the credit(s) the college awarded.
 
College admissions folks appreciate reading straightforward transcripts, not ones that are composed to look official. By that I mean, don't use numbers just because someone else came up with them. Colleges use numbers to keep things straight in their course catalogs and timeline for their students.
 
Another suggestion is to include the words with Labs if the science course included a full complement of labs. This way, admissions will know labs were done. If they don't see it, they may assume no labs were done.
 
As for those unique courses, such as ditch digging, that falls under the category Construction. Try to determine what category a unique courses would fall in. For instance, beekeeping is Apiology, not Animal Sciences.
 
The use of correct terminology is important and both the student and parent need to know what each term on the transcript means. When the student goes for an interview with a college admissions officer, s/he must have a handle on each term so that if explanations are needed, s/he can give it graciously. Saying, "Gee, I don't know," doesn't go over very well. A teen college applicant should be able to say something similar to:
"Apiology is the focused study on beekeeping. I took a full year course taught by the Maine Apiology Association and received my license. Now I have ten sets of hives and sell my produce in five local grocery stores. I'm thinking about expanding and selling to Maine and New Hampshire in the next year."
 
Now, THAT will make them sit up and take notice! Of course, that's also not an unusual statement for a homeschooler, as we all know. :-)
 
Sincerely,
Shirley Minster, Director
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Remaking the Grade
Colleges Devise Formulas to Interpret Applicants' High-School GPAs
 
By Anne Marie Chaker
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
 
If you plan to go to college, you probably place a lot of weight on your grade-point average. But you may be interested to know that many colleges don't.
 
The problem is that GPAs-always somewhat unreliable because curricula differ so much across schools-have in some cases become almost meaningless as high schools experiment with ways to measure students. Some high schools, worried about putting their students at a disadvantage with college admissions offices, give extra weight to grades in more difficult or AP courses. Other schools, in a nod to political correctness, are either reluctant to measure students at all with traditional grades or have developed their own creative way of assessing them.
 
To try to cut through this hodgepodge, colleges around the country are coming up with their own formulas to recalculate each applicant's GPA. One strategy-used by Emory University and the University of California system, among others-is to drop the pluses and minuses alongside letter grades. (So a B-plus in trigonometry becomes a B.) Another approach is to disregard the applicant's entire freshman year of high school. Some schools, like Haverford College in Pennsylvania, now go a step further, throwing out the GPA altogether and relying instead on the student's class rank.
 
In short, many colleges are changing how they approach GPAs, and in a surprising variety of ways. The upshot is that it is now often impossible for students to assess the admissions power of their grades unless they know the system used by each college they are applying to. Colleges say that in most cases, GPAs wind up dropping after the recalculation. So for some high-school students, a 4.0 might be worth far less than they thought.
 
Pluses and Minuses
 
The high-school transcript of a student with lots of pluses next to his grades, for example, could mean more to Johns Hopkins, which takes those shades into account in its recalculation. At Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, by contrast, "an A is an A is an A," says Michael Steidel, CMU's director of admissions, regardless of whether there was a plus or a minus alongside it.
 
In addition, since colleges like Emory don't give credit in their formula for difficult courses, it may not make sense for a student already taking a decent dose of APs to overload on them and risk a low grade.
Of course, none of this in any way means that high-school grades don't matter. Even where colleges don't take course difficulty into account in the calculation itself, that doesn't mean they aren't checking how many honors classes a student is taking. Many colleges continue to look more favorably on applicants who take challenging classes, even if they don't factor that into their GPA formula.
 
In the past couple of years, Johns Hopkins began recalculating GPA by throwing out "non-academic" courses like art or music, unless such a course shows academic rigor, as in AP art history or AP studio art. (One recent applicant's transcript included an A in lacrosse-needless to say, that didn't make the cut.) Johns Hopkins, as well as the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Carnegie Mellon, also throws out all freshman-year marks.
 
Some colleges, including Georgetown University and Haverford, ignore GPA altogether, instead focusing on class rank. One hitch to this approach is that many high schools are abandoning the practice of ranking students; in a recent study, over half of high schools said they no longer do so.
 
But that doesn't stop college admissions officers from considering that measure. Rob Killion, director of admissions at Haverford, says that in the absence of a ranking, he may have to "guesstimate" how those students placed in the class. "Sometimes that hurts the applicants," he says, since his guess is usually conservative.
 
Just Ask
 
While colleges often don't publicize the details of these formulas, students should simply ask colleges whether and how they recalculate. In the case of courses such as art or religion, which may not be counted in the GPA formulas, students can ask their high-school counselors to write a letter vouching for its credibility as a rigorous course. It carries sway with some schools.
 
"When in doubt, we typically include [a course]," says Mr. Steidel at Carnegie Mellon.
 
In large part, the GPA policies are simply a response by colleges to the growing variance among high schools in how they grade. For example, Taft School, a boarding school in Watertown, Conn., favors a six-point scale for its GPA, rather than the traditional four-point scale. Other high schools, like St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., use descriptive phrasing to distinguish merit, such as "high honors" or "honors," instead of A's and B's. Governor Livingston High School, in Berkeley Heights, N.J., even uses an "E" grade to "soften the blow" of failing a course, says Jane Webber Runte, the guidance director there.
 
But as more colleges come up with new GPA formulas, some high schools are now following their lead. Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Mass., for instance, is now moving away from giving extra weight for harder courses. The school hopes that doing so will lead colleges to look more closely at the total transcripts of its students, says Peter Gow, the school's academic dean.
 
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Edu-speak, the dictionary

Why is this used?
 
As list member Lonnie Turbee put it:
 
One of the reasons educrats use language like this is because, whether they're conscious of it or not, it gives them power over us mere "lay" parents. It has actually worked to intimidate me! I never became a public school teacher (I've always taught at the university level), so I never had a professional reason to "cognitively interact" with such drivel, although I've read plenty of the nonsense that shows up in professional journal articles - may have written some of it myself. It's saddening to think of all the parents who are valiantly struggling to do their best by their kids inside the school system who are faced with educrats who use this kind of power play to keep everyone, kids and parents, under control.
 
This list was compiled by Amy Leinen and is being posted with her permission:
 
The definitions of these terms are below.
ability
 

abstract thinking
acquired
adapt
analytical
auditory
balance
basic
bimanual
broadens perspective
calculating
cause and effect
cognitive
common sense
comparison
competence
comprehensive
concepts
concentrated amount
cooperative learning
concise
configuration
consensus decisions
conflict
coordination
deducting
definition
determining
developmental
discussion forum
enabling objective
engaging
estimation
evaluate
examples
explanation
extensive
external evaluation
facilitate
factoring
feedback
financial
fine motor skills
formative evaluation
fundamentals
grammatically
identification
independent
IEP (Individual Educational Plan)
instructional
intensive interest
intensive instruction
interactive feedback
internal evaluation
interpretation
keyboard skills
key concepts
knowledge
large motor skills
literacy
logic
mastery
mediation
memory
mental math
mentoring
multimedia
oral language
perform
practical
preliminary evaluation
problem solving
process
progress
progressive learning
qualitative evaluation
quantitative evaluation
ratios
reference
reinforced
responsibility
resolution
retention
reviewing
standards
self motivation
sequence
service learning
silent reading
skills
specific goals
statistics
stimuli
structurally
summative evaluation
tactile
tailored
terminal objective
thematic units
theme based
tutorial
utilizing
visual
whole language approach
word recognition
 

 
 [[Definintions to above words are quite lengthy. See the website where they are listed.]]
 
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Elective Course Descriptions
 
To help you prepare your child's high school transcript, here is a list of elective course descriptions used by a local public school. Generally, public schools and colleges will not accept these courses as meeting the requirements of high school math, science, history, and English but they can be used as credits for electives. If in doubt, check with the school.
 
Note: 1 credit = .5 unit or 1 semester of work, 2 credits = 1 unit or 2 semesters of work.
Course descriptions and credit values vary from school to school. The descriptions below are given as examples only. As the “principal” of your homeschool, you have the ability to create your own course and assign your own credit values.
  
[[The rest of this page is lengthy with descriptions. Go to the website to read more. ]]
 
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Mary Baldwin College Sample Transcript
 
 
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Sample Home School Transcript - Excellent !
 
 
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Donna Young has several tracking forms and transcript templates in WORD format on her site.
 
 
Even the saltiest homeschool teacher might feel a bit nervous about homeschooling through the high school years. A lot of us have done it and it is very possible that you can too. Do research and find out what is required in your state and create a 4-year outline of the required courses and credits. See also: High School Help
 
The forms on this page are just the like ones which are scattered throughout my website. They are gathered here just for the sake of handiness.
 
 
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[[Another excellent instruction page. Go to the site below. ]]
 
 
Transcripts
 
Index:
Sample Transcript (pdf document)
 
 
ProSara Software sells simple-to-use computer software to enable homeschoolers to create their own professionally designed diplomas and transcripts.
  
Accredition: Public schools in the midwest get accredited from: North Central Association (www.nca.asu.edu) They set these standards for granting credit for high school level work:
    • Semester Hour: successful completion of a course which meets one period per week for one semester of at least 18 weeks. (1 credit)
    • Carnegie Unit: completion of course that meets 40 min/day, 5 days/week, 36 weeks or 120 clock hours. (1 unit)
    • Credit by performance: school establishes guidelines by which credit may be given on a performance basis by means of approved assessments of varying kinds covering the content ordinarily included in a regular school course in the subject.
    • Independent Study Programs: planned programs of independent learning in which students need not attend classes a specific amount of time during the semester. Credit is granted for satisfactory performance on proficiency exams or for successful completion of curricular units, steps, or phases as comprising the equivalency of a unit of work.
    • Work-study programs.
    • Credit through extension, correspondence, and televised courses.
    • Credit for study abroad and military experience.
Homeschool Credits: You are the principal, counselor, and teacher of a small private school. Like a small private school, you grant credit any way you want.  
    • Use the same terminology and grading system as the public schools to prevent confusion.
    • Have your child complete the same number of credits and/or units required at public schools, minimum.
    • Use your common sense. If it seems comparable to public high school level work, take it. Public schools grant high school credit for remedial reading through calculus.
    • See Making the Most of Extracurricular Activities for more information on recording elective credits. A great resource for keeping track of your extracurricular activities is The Checklist!
Grades are mainly a sorting mechanism for public schools. Some students have to be at the top, some at the bottom, and the rest in the middle. Grades do not necessarily give an accurate picture of what a child has learned.
    • It is, however, best to speak the same language on transcripts for high school. Use letter grades and the 4.00 grading system to avoid confusion.
    • Award A’s for subjects you feel your children have mastered or completed as required. Tell college admissions what you did. They are not as concerned with the grades your homeschool child received as they are what he actually studied and how he went about studing it. This is best demonstrated through a portfolio.
The most commonly used grading symbols used and recognized are A, B, C, D, and F. Generally they are understood to mean the following:
    • A= Excellent, Outstanding, Superior Achievement, Completed assignment as required.
    • B = Commendable, Good Achievement
    • C = Acceptable, Adequate Achievement
    • D= Minimal, Poor Achievement
    • F = Failure, Unacceptable Achievement
How to prepare a transcript.  
  • Include the following at the top of the page:
    • The student’s full legal name, birth date, sex, address, phone number, and social security number.
    • The name of the parents or legal guardians.
    • The name of the school, if applicable.
    • A list of the subjects studied, the dates studied, the grade awarded, and credits earned.
  • Designate the units earned for each subject studied. North Central Association (the accrediting agency for public schools) assigns units as follows:
    • Carnegie Unit: This is the amount of credit given for the successful completion of a course which meets 40 minutes daily, five days per week, for at least 36 weeks, or the equivalent amount of time within the school year. The equivalent time is 120 clock hours.
    • Credit by Performance: The school establishes guidelines by which credit may be given on a performance basis by means of approved assessments of varying kinds covering the content ordinarily included in a regular school course in the subject. A school also may use assessments as the basis for admission of students with educational experience for which transcripts of credit are not available.
    • Independent Study Programs: The school may provide planned programs of independent learning in which students need not attend classes a specific amount of time during a semester. In such instances, credit may be granted for satisfactory performance on proficiency examinations or for successful completion of curricular units, steps, or phases established by the school as comprising the equivalency of a unit of work.
    • Work-Study Programs: Credit may be given provided the program is under the supervision of the school.
    • Other methods of obtaining credit include: Study Abroad, Credit through Military Experiences, Credit through Extension, Correspondence, and Televised Courses, and Credit for Summer School Study. For more information, check their website at: http://www.ncacasi.org/standard/ems
 
 
  • In general, “Academic” subjects such as English, Math, History, Science, Government, etc. are usually assigned one unit (2 credits) per year.
  • “Non-academic” subjects such as home economics, physical education, music, art, woodworking, etc. are usually assigned .5 unit (1 credit).
  • The difference between an “Academic” and “Non-academic” subject is that the “Academic” subject includes an instructional component. An instructional component is the addition of reading, research, and written assignments to the subject being studied. Example: To earn a unit in music appreciation, in addition to taking piano lessons, the student could read biographies of great musicians and listen to a variety of music styles and forms. They could do some research on musical instruments, music terms, and the history of music and then create a written report about their study in music. (See Elective Course Descriptions for more information.)
  • Physical education is no longer required in Oklahoma for high school. If giving credits for physical education, credits are usually earned at a rate of .5 unit (1 credit) per year.
  • One unit of music and art are required in Oklahoma. This can be earned by the student taking music or art lessons at a rate of .5 unit (1 credit) per year. If you add an instructional component to their music or art lessons during the year, they would earn one full unit for the year.
  • Bible is usually earned at a rate of .5 unit (1 credit) per year unless an instructional component is added.
  • If no instructional component is added to the activity, list it as an activity or “extracurricular.”
  • Include a write up about extracurricular activities the student has had piano lessons, drama class, etc.) and special awards or educational opportunities.
  • It is especially important to list any leadership roles the child has had and volunteer or work-study programs where particular skills were learned. Be sure to list the skills learned.
  • List any hobbies or home businesses in which the child participated where he learned particular skills such as bookkeeping, graphic arts, marketing, etc. This might be another area where you can add an instructional component to create a credit course.
How to Figure GPAs.
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How to figure your GPA
 
grade point calculator
 
GPA Calculators
 
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[[Short discussion of topics listed below with Inge Cannon. Excellent and short.]]

 
Who needs high school transcripts?
 
Mike:
Inge, you've spent a lot of time helping homeschoolers with their record keeping. Tell us, who should keep high school transcripts, and why?
Inge:
Well, Michael, no matter where you go to school—public, private, parochial, doesn't really matter—guess who does your record keeping, your transcript, and your diploma? The people who taught you, the people who put your program together, the people who evaluated that program. So in homeschooling, it stands to reason that if you're going to get a diploma, if you're going to get a transcript, you have to get it from the people who taught you, the people who put your program together, the people who evaluated you, and in that case that is the parent.
 
Cutting through the confusion of high school transcripts
 
Mike Smith:
Inge, preparing a high school transcript can seem like a daunting task for a parent. Can you give us the basics? How do parents get it right?
Inge Cannon:
The key, Michael, is that a transcript is simply an academic resume. It has to be concise; all the data needs to fit on the front and back of one sheet of paper. There are some people out there that say you can do a whole 20-page deal, but you still have to have a snapshot, a summary, for people to get the whole picture in a hurry, and then you can add a portfolio and other addendum sheets that explain what you want to do.
What do you have to have on that transcript? The name of the student, the name of the school (that's optional in homeschooling, of course), the history of all the subjects studied with grades and credits, extracurricular activity lists, standardized test scores, a grade point average, and the signature of the school official with a date of graduation.
 
Maintaining your homeschool philosophy
 
Mike Smith:
It often seems like parents get caught up in the details of high school transcripts and forget their reasons for homeschooling in the first place. Inge, how do parents create effective transcripts while still maintaining their homeschool philosophy?
Inge Cannon:
Well, Mike, that's not so easy, because we get caught up with our intimidation, our fear that we might not do it just right, and I have to tell parents all the time, "Don't be so transcript minded that you're of no discipleship-good." The essence of homeschooling philosophy for Christians involves two things: discipleship, along with a tutorial approach to achieving academic excellence. Too many folks resort to what I call the quad-fours—that traditional high school way of looking at "four English, four math, four science, and four history." And many students are not wired together for quad-fours. Many people don't understand that public schools everywhere give all kinds of diplomas, and we in homeschooling can do the same thing as well. And you know, Mike, if we miss anything along the way, it's not like we can't ever learn it again.
 
Getting high school credit in junior high
 
Mike Smith:
Our guest this week, Inge Cannon, has joined us to discuss how homeschoolers can handle high school transcripts. Inge, I've heard many people say that the junior high school years are the most wasted years in a child's education. How do parents avoid that wasted time?
Inge Cannon:
Mike, historically, junior high was designed to be a remediation exercise— to take children from primary education and review everything in math and grammar and language arts to make sure that they would be ready for high school. And then in the areas of science and social studies, what we begin to do is get what I call the inoculation version of everything we're going to get later on. In other words, we learn just enough that we're forever allergic to studying it again. So I tell parents that if you're child is ready to do that work on the high school level, skip the junior high book. Take the high school U.S. history book, or high school world history book; split it in half—do ancient world history one year, modern world history another year. And don't forget, Mike, any time your student does high school work, he gets high school credit, no matter how young he may be.
 
Making transcripts reflect homeschool flexibility
 
Mike Smith:
Homeschoolers have a great amount of flexibility available to them in their studies. Tell us, Inge, how do parents include things like community service and extracurricular activities on a transcript, and how important are they?
Inge Cannon:
Well, Michael, we are finding out today that if you leave out of your transcript any list of extracurricular activities, you will not get into most colleges around this country. And, in fact, you definitely will not get any scholarship help to attend higher education. You need to show that you are a well rounded student with lots of activities that are outside the purview of your academic excellence. So it is very important that parents include these things.
However, you have to remember that the transcript is a two-page snapshot, front and back, on one piece of paper. And so your listing is going to be one-liners with just a little bit of time-designation in parentheses after. Parents get frustrated with that and say, "But my child has learned so many things! How do I show that?" Well, you make an addendum sheet; at the top of the title you put Extracurricular Activity Descriptions, and you just tell what those activities were all about.
 
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Sample Transcript
 
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Sample of University requirements – Most colleges have a page similar to this in their admissions section. Homeschoolers are ‘non-public’ as any other private school
 
 
NC State admissions

Non-Public and Home School Requirements

NC State University welcomes applications from non-public and home schooled students. The requirements for the admission of non-public and home schooled students are the same as for any other freshman applicant.
Criteria for the admission of non-public and home schooled students include:
  • Registration with the North Carolina Division of Non-public Education, Governor’s Office, Raleigh, North Carolina (919) 733-4276 is required.
  • A high school transcript showing all coursework taken and grades received.
  • The minimum course requirements for the University of North Carolina constituent institutions must be completed. See the following Office of the President web site for a detailed listing of these courses: http://www.northcarolina.edu/student_info/mcr.cfm
  • In addition to the minimum course requirements, NC State University requires 2 years of the same foreign language. Additional courses in math and science beyond the minimum course requirements are highly recommended. The level and difficulty of coursework is considered.  Honors and AP level courses are given extra weight in the evaluation of an application for admission.
  • The SAT or the ACT is required (see below for more information).
  • The following SAT Subject Tests may be requested: One science (Biology, Chemistry, or Physics), Math Level 2 (formerly called Level IIC), English Writing or Literature.
  • For Design applicants only - A portfolio, additional information on creativity, or an interview may be requested.
  • Non-public and home schooled students must meet all application deadlines.
Please note: Admission to NC State is highly competitive. Admissions facts about entering First Year Students including average SAT scores are listed at the following URL: http://www.ncsu.edu/images/facts.pdf
 
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Listing of Community Colleges in NC