Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Homeschool High School Transcript


Homeschool transcript 5 easy steps


It’s time to apply to college and now my student needs a high school transcript.  Where do I begin?  How do I remember what courses my student studied, much less the grade they earned?  What do I need to include on a transcript?  HELP!

Does this sound familiar?



Whether your student is a high school senior applying to college or a younger high school student applying for dual credit college classes, he or she will need a high school transcript.  With your first student, it is easy to overlook this detail until the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ appears.  Hopefully, with any other students, you will remember to start keeping a transcript in 9th grade.

With my first child, I don’t recall when I began keeping records, but I don’t think it was the 9th grade.  I have made a transcript in Excel that I now use as a template for all my students.

Here are 5 easy steps to create a homeschool high school transcript.  I have provided 2 screenshots of my 2 page transcript from two of my boys. (Note: page 1 is from one student and page 2 is from a different student.) Each step is labeled in the image for easy reference for this blog.  These numbers do not appear on the transcript I make.

Click to view larger

1.  STUDENT INFORMATION

Include the student’s Full Name, Gender, and Birthdate.
Under that, include the Parent/Guardian Name and Address.

2.  SCHOOL INFORMATION
The name of the school.  I gave our school a name for this purpose.  
Physical Address of the school and phone number.

Graduation Date for this student.
Signature (this is important).  I usually sign here or my husband could.


3.  RECORD OF COURSES TAKEN
This is broken down by grade.  Notice that I do not keep records by semester.  I give one final grade and credit.  List the course name.  You can be more specific than I was.  For example, instead of Western Civ 1, I could have put Ancient World History.  

Notice that some subjects only received half a credit.  These are classes that were only one semester long or the time spent on it was only worth half a credit.

Sometimes your student will be involved in an activity or pursue an interest on their own; give them credit for it.  In this example, Caleb took a Racquetball Class at our co-op class, but then he spent quite a bit of time honing his skills outside of class.  I gave him one physical education credit for that.  Some of my other students played soccer, so they received a credit for that.  

Caleb also has 1 music credit.  He taught himself to play the drums and then played in our church worship band which involved an hour of practice each week.  For my students who took piano lessons, especially the very serious ones, I gave them at least one music credit for each year they took lessons in high school.

What is an Honors class?  For English, I gave my students the option of regular English or Honors English.  If they chose the Honors curriculum, they read twice as many books (36 at the time - more on that another day) and wrote more papers.

If  your student takes any college courses, you need to note that on the transcript.  Any courses taken at the local community college counted as one full credit on the transcript.

Determining Grades
To make my record keeping easy, most of my final scores are based on test score averages.  This is very easy with math.  For English and History, their writing and some daily work is worked into the score.  In general, if the final average is one point away from the next grade and the student has diligently done their work every day, I will give them credit for that and bump their grade.  For example, if their average is 79 and they have worked diligently, I will give them an 80, which is a B at my school.

Check your numbers carefully.  I just noticed that the 9th grade GPA is incorrect.

4.  GPA/CREDIT DISTRIBUTION
This is where you give the GPA by grade and overall GPA.
Also, tell how the GPA is calculated.  Some schools weight honors courses so that an A is worth 5 points instead of 4.  I don’t weight my courses, and I say so.  If you do, say so.

How to calculate GPA
GPA calculation is fairly simple.  Each A receives 4 points, B receives 3 points, and C receives 2 points.  In my school, anything below that is failing, but if you allow D, it would receive 1 point.  
Multiply the points for grade by the number of credits received for the course.
Add the total number of grade points and divide by the total number of course credits for the GPA.

Looking at the example (page one of the transcript) for 9th grade, there are:
2.5 B’s  x 3  = 7.5
4.5  A’s  x 4=  18

7 credits total  and 25.5 grade points        25.55 divided by 7 = 3.64 GPA

Distribution of Credits Earned

This is where colleges will look to see how many math, science, english, etc. credits your student has earned.  There is a specific number of credits in some subject areas that colleges want your student to have.  Check some college websites to get an idea of what they want a college ready student to have taken in high school.

Generally, they want 4 years of English, 3-4 Science, 3-4 math, 3 Foreign Language, etc.
This is where planning out high school in 9th grade works to your advantage!

Also, make sure the credit distribution numbers and total credits earned add up correctly.

5.  OTHER INFORMATION

Even though the college might ask for a resume and usually has test scores, this gets all the information about your student in one spot for Admissions.

As you can see, I list awards won, jobs held, camps attended (if relevant), and club/extracurricular activities.  Nathan was applying as a piano major, so I made sure this showed some of his activity in that area.     

Test Scores - put the name of the test and the date the test was taken.  You can choose to break the scores down by subject area or not.  Nathan was a National Merit Finalist, so I made sure to include that information.  

Follow these 5 easy steps to create a transcript for your homeschool high school student.  I have used this format for five students, so far.  I have never had a problem from colleges concerning the information or the formatting.  As long as you include all of this information and remember to sign the document, you should be fine.  

Do not exceed two pages.  I usually print this and staple the pages, but you could print on the back so that you have a one page document.        

I hope you found this information helpful.  If you did, please share this post.  If you have questions, leave me a comment and I will answer there as other people might have the same question.

3 comments:

Mrs. Claudia Evans said...

Thanks, Karen, for so much helpful information! Arrived here from Apologia site. Thanks for taking the time to post the actual transcript. My first to start high school will begin this fall, so I'm trying to get ducks in a row. Thank you!

karentrina said...

Glad you found me. Follow by email to get all my posts. I will be concentrating mostly on high school information this year. Congratulations for getting your ducks in a row now instead of much later!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing! I found this very helpful.
Tara

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