Tips for Building Your Homeschool High School Portfolio
If your homeschooled high schooler is college bound, you're likely going to need a Homeschool Portfolio.
A homeschool portfolio is a collected body of your child's accumulated work over time. Many colleges and universities ask homeschooled applicants to include a portfolio with their applications because they understand that homeschooled children often pursue paths, approaches, and coursework that differ from what is offered by traditional school systems.
Tip #1: Include a Variety
Rather than being judged exclusively on their transcript or test scores, the homeschool portfolio gives your homeschooled child an opportunity to show who they are by highlighting what they learned, emphasizing their unique interests and strengths.
While specific institutions vary in what they look for in a homeschool portfolio, many portfolios include a mix of the following:
Name and bio of your homeschool
Specific coursework taken with course descriptions
List of any textbooks/ curricula used for each course
Certificates of completion for each course
Impactful passions projects your child has created
Book lists for your child's leisure reading
Impressive writing samples ( essays, reports, research papers, etc)
Extracurricular activities your child participated in
Community service/ volunteer hours your child completed
Work experience or internships your child took advantage of
Standardized test scores or state issued documents
Letters of recommendation from instructors, coaches, mentors or other adults NOT in the family
If your child is aiming for specific institutions of higher education, definitely check their websites or call the admissions office in advance to find out what requirements they have for homeschooled applicant portfolios.
Tip #2: Start Early
It's recommended to begin this process when your child begins taking high school level courses. This will make it easier to organize, maintain and add to over time, rather than waiting until the they're sending out college applications and you have to frantically hunt everything down from three or four years before.
Remember, as a homeschooler, there are no hard and fast rules about when you can begin high school coursework. You don't have to wait until your child is 14 years old or in the 9th grade. If your child is younger but taking high school level coursework, it can be added to their portfolio and be documented in their transcript!
Tip #3: Make it Easy to Access
While homeschool portfolios can be paper-based and bound into binders, we recommend making your child's high school portfolio digital, since it's likely that you will be sending it out to multiple institutions at the same time.
When you compile your items, make sure everything is sorted, organized and clearly labeled so admissions officers can easily access and review the items they want to see. An easy way to do this is to sort items by their category. The easier the portfolio is for others to navigate the more likely it is that admissions officers will take the time to look through the portfolio and get to see who your child is and what they have to offer.