You’ve homeschooled through the elementary years and watched your student grow into the person they are today. But now, they are entering high school and homeschooling seems overwhelming. Questions swirl in your head: “What if I forget to teach a subject? Can my homeschool student go to college? What if my high schooler has questions I can’t answer? How do I make a homeschool transcript that shows what my student did in high school?”
How to Make a Homeschool Transcript
Homeschooling is hard work — I’m not going to sugarcoat it. And to be sure all that hard work is accounted for, you need to create a homeschool transcript that accurately portrays the courses, grades, GPA, and extracurriculars your student has accomplished.
Fortunately, there are helpful homeschool transcript makers and services that allow parents and students to make a professional-looking transcript that will appeal to colleges. Check out Apple Core System, HSLDA Transcript Service, or Classical Conversations’ own Academic Records for a transcript generator that will even calculate your student’s GPA!
But before I get ahead of myself, let’s first break down how to make a homeschool transcript. Here are the four steps you need to take to create a homeschool high school transcript:
Step 1: Plan Out Homeschooling Through High School
Classical Conversations makes it easy because the curriculum is laid out for us. Even so, I highly recommend sitting down with your child before their freshman year to include them in the making of your high school plan. This is a great time to start thinking about future plans and dream together. Where do they want to end up in four years? Don’t discourage at this point, just think out loud and break down how to get there.
Once you have a vision of where you and your student want to go, you can add extracurriculars in if necessary. Always comparing where we want to go with where we are spending our time will help weed out unnecessary things.
Step 2: Calculate Your Student’s Grades and GPA
There are two basic approaches to grades — letter grades and number grades.
I’m a homeschool parent that grades my student on their character and work completed. So, I use letter grades — meaning, I assign a letter instead of a number. For example, I give A’s, B’s and C’s.
Since we also work toward mastery, there are no failing grades. But if you prefer a more exact measuring system, your family can use number grades. If your child participates or will participate in CC Plus to receive dual enrollment for college credit, their professor will assign grades for them.
HSLDA offers its members helpful resources for homeschooling through high school, like this article on calculating your homeschool student’s GPA. If you are not an HSLDA member, you can use a basic homeschool GPA calculator.
Step 3: Fill in Your Homeschool Transcript Every Year
At the end of each semester or academic year, you should fill in your transcript. To do this, you can use one of many free homeschool transcript templates online or you can use an online homeschool transcript maker or generator service.
What’s the difference between a homeschool transcript template and a transcript maker? Simply put, a template helps you build your own transcript with a word processor or spreadsheet whereas a transcript generator will automatically format all the information you provide, which removes much of the stress that can come from wondering how to make a homeschool transcript. Many homeschool transcript generators, like Academic Records, will even calculate your student’s GPA too.
Members of HSLDA also benefit from receiving access to a number of free homeschool transcript templates as well as the option to use HSLDA’s own homeschool transcript maker.
So, every year, record what subject you taught, the grade given, and how many credit hours your student earned. Many homeschool parents are concerned about how to assign credit hours. However, it’s less complicated than it may seem. Check out this infographic on how to determine a credit hour for a high school transcript:
Step 4: Create the Final Transcript
After collecting four years of data, you can compile it nicely into one master high school transcript. If you decide to use a homeschool transcript maker over the course of these high school years, they will conveniently do this for you.
But if you chose to do it yourself or you only want to pay the transcript service for the final product, you will enter in all your info into one document.
What About College?
Not every homeschool student plans to go to college. Still, many have chosen career paths that require a degree. Often, parents are concerned that their homeschool transcript will not compare to those of public school students.
Fear not! Many universities actively seek out homeschool students and are eager to see what they accomplished during high school (Read: Can Homeschoolers Go to College? Short Answer: Yes!)
Of course, it’s important to make an effort to create a professional-looking high school transcript. In the end, your final homeschool transcript should:
- Give an accurate representation of the student’s work.
- Keep it simple.
- Include subject grades and an overall GPA.
Even if your student isn’t planning to go to college, a solid transcript will help them enroll in trade schools and in the military. Many entry-level job positions would also appreciate seeing your student’s academic achievements before hiring them. Plus, if your student ever changes their mind about college, they have a high school transcript ready to go.
