Highschool Transcripts

Hi Heather!

Here’s what I do.  I have changed several things as we’ve progressed through high school–changing what I’m including in what “courses”, changing credts I’m assigning to different courses, etc.  I did make out a basic plan before high school for each boy (good site for this http://www.janice-campbell.com/ ) but since I keep changing things, I’m glad I’ve not done the transcript each year.  Instead I’ve carefully collected information–I keep sheets for each “course” I plan and teach–and keep on them what my objectives are, what materials we’ve used, approximate times spent, tables of contents of  books, descriptions of materials from catalogs and websites.  I also keep grades for a few courses, so I keep track of their scores on, say, Apologia or math tests.  I keep all this in a folder for each “subject” I am teaching.  I just did my oldest son’s transcript this summer–the one he’ll be using as he applies to colleges this fall.  I had changed so much around, I’m glad I waited to do the transcript FORM until now.  I gathered up all my materials I’d kept, prayerfully decided how to organize the courses, and made up a transcript and course descriptions.  It didn’t take me too awfully long–have done it since school was out this year.  There are TONS of free transcript templates out there–I used a free one sent me by a subscriber to an email list I’m on (hs2col at yahoogroups–fantastic group of parents!) as I liked it best.  There are also free ones on multiple websites, many of which I liked much better than the paid programs like Transcript Pro.  There is a good one on the  HSLDA website, for instance.

I DO recommend doing some research using websites or books on how to do the transcript and the course descriptions.  My favorites:  the materials on the Janice Campbell website I posted above; Homeschooling High School by Jeanne Gowen Dennis, and Setting the Records Straight by Lee Binz (especially this one if you are considering applying to selective colleges).  If you PM me I’ll send you a copy of ds’s transcript to look at if you like.  There are copies of course descriptions at the files of hs2col that I used as a base for my own course descriptions, and that file is pretty big! so you may not want me to mail it to you.  🙂  I got the most good out of seeing lots and lots of examples from others–the books I recommend have some, and so do websites.  I looked over many and then decided what I wanted on ds’s to best highlight him and his achievements.  We’ll be having all the fun of applications this fall, including to some very selective schools, so I’ll be able to let you know how they all worked.  🙂 

We recently used the Total Transcript Solution materials from Lee Binz at The Home Scholar and I took notes along the way. If there’s enough interest I could write up a little review of it.