Buried in the mountains of applications that college admissions offices receive every year are a handful of envelopes from high school students who may never have endured a crowded lecture or sweated over their class rank: home-schoolers.
Their application forms may be unconventional and their educational experiences unusual, but students who have received their education outside a traditional school setting are routinely earning admission and scholarships to many of the nation's colleges and universities.
"We've found that these students are so strong that it's in the best interest of the institution to take them very seriously," said Karen Hornig, vice president for enrollment management at College of Notre Dame of Maryland.
Said Carlton "Corky" Surbeck, director of admissions at Goucher College in Towson: "Basically, they're pretty darn bright."
Keeli Precord, a 17-year-old home-schooler who entered Goucher as a freshman this fall, was home-schooled during her four years of high school. A student in the Anne Arundel County public school system through eighth grade, she is happy with the welcome she received from the eight colleges where she interviewed.
"My mom was a little worried that they wouldn't know what to do with me because I home-schooled, but the colleges were very accommodating," said Precord, an accomplished horseback rider who hopes to join Goucher's equestrian team. "Most of them said they had found home-schoolers to be more disciplined, more mature, more well-rounded and more aware of what they wanted."
And while she was required to take some SAT II subject-specific tests, in addition to the standard SAT, because she was a home-schooler, "applying for college wasn't very difficult at all," Precord said.
Nationwide, 1.7 million students of all ages were home-schooled during the 1999-2000 school year, according to William Lloyd, a researcher and Washington branch manager for the National Home Education Research Institute, a nonprofit organization. And while numbers are elusive, educators say the number of home-school college applicants is small but growing.
"We look at home-schooled students as a special group," said Tom Taylor, assistant provost for enrollment at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "Their families are very committed to education. They're getting very intensive work and they're very engaged in what they're doing."
