Email of the Day:
Have questions about high school transcript. My son is a running start student, and will be graduating soon. How do I go about listing his course classes for junior/senior year? Where on transcript do I indicate where courses were taken?
Answer:
Some people add the RS courses to their highschool transcript and denote that they were taken at the college with an asterisk by the course and a legend below. In general, a four year school will request transcripts from the college as part of the application process.
Because our daughter attended Running Start full time all 6 quarters, we did not add her college grades to her highschool transcript. We used the college quarter credit system for our highschool credits, and then wrote a cover letter that explained what, how, and why we’d done it. So our daughter’s highschool transcript basically covers two years (and we added the things we did at home for the second two years, but most of those were in the trades (fire science, construction, etc.). We didn’t include the academic work she did at the college on her highschool transcript.
In general, I recommend using the following things to guide your decision:
Who is your reader? What is your purpose? (Are you using this transcript for entrance to college? What kind of college? What kind of hints does their admissions office give for what they’re looking for? What major is your student considering? Or, are you using this for entrance into the military or an organization that prefers standardization without deviation?)
What best reflects the truth of what you did in your homeschooling? (We were unschoolers with a focus on music, and then she took off to college for RS and majored in computer science).
What best reflects the facts of your homeschooling? (Our “coursework” at home the last two years was pretty much entirely experiential).
Is it to your advantage to emphasize the uniqueness of your student’s education, or is it to your advantage to stress how similar to a standard academic education from a private school your homeschooling was?
Let me know if you’d like to kick this around some more.
Warmly,
–Jen Garrison Stuber, WHO Board Advocacy Chair