Show HN: High school transcript generator for homeschoolers

[jkurnia]

Hi everyone,

Great Books Homeschool has just released this free tool for generating high school transcripts using the standard American unweighted GPA system. It's available to the public at no cost, and no account creation is required.

These are both resources that would have saved me time as a new homeschooling parent, and I hope they are helpful to others.

Comments and feedback are welcome!

[iambateman]

This is cool! We are thinking about homeschooling and need all the tools we can get.

As an aside, I finished high school homeschooled. A state scholarship requires you to be in the top 10% of your class, so the state added me to a cohort of 120 people I had never met, decided I was 7th in that cohort, and gave me an extra $10k in scholarship money.

So yea, “top 10%” metrics are dumb.

[drBonkers]

To echo my sibling comment, please do not homeschool your children. Find a good charter school or alternative education institution that meets your the educational goals you have for your children and still allows them daily access to many peers and professional adults.

My siblings and I were homeschooled and we all admit it severely stunted our social development during critical periods. Once a critical period's window of opportunity has passed, you forever miss out on the development it enables.

Unmitigated homeschooling is to social aptitude as a nutritional deficit is to physical stature.

[kokorozasu]

haha i was also homeschooled and the 10% is self-reported in my state, so I just checked yes on all of those.

[LargeTomato]

Please, please do not. Homeschooling damages your social skills in a way few other things can. Homeschooled kids lose out on a lot of "free play" where the other kids are learning appropriate social behaviors.

My brother and I were homeschooled for a couple years and it messed us up for like 3-5 years after. I've worked with people who were homeschooled until college and they are very weird, socially inept, and occasionally inappropriate.

[SoftTalker]

Good luck. Pretty much anyone who "requires" a high school transcript as a prerequisite for anything will only accept them from an accredited school, or maybe from at least a recognized homeschool program.

If you're entirely homeschooling on your own, a transcript that looks like you created it in Microsoft Word is not going to go very far.

[biomcgary]

I had no problem getting into college after homeschooling using a Microsoft Word based transcript. I'm old enough that back then standardized testing mattered more, so a good score on the SAT or ACT meant that your transcripts were less critical as a signal for future success.

OTOH, some places recognize homeschooling provides a unique perspective on education. For example, I was invited to interview at Yale's biology graduate program at least in part due to my homeschooling background.

My guess is that low end institutions looking for respectability are more sensitive to getting official transcripts, where the high end is looking for more diversity of background.

[hobobaggins]

We just created a homeschool transcript in Libreoffice, since it was required as part of the application process. Our daughter was admitted to both universities applied to and offered a "full ride" scholarship for one (which is the one she accepted). She was also offered (and accepted) a part time role in the CS dept at a different university.

Not sure what "a recognized homeschool program" is; we used a mixture of materials.

When you start homeschooling, you will begin to meet other parents who are also homeschooling, but it's still your journey and not anyone else's; we've found that different tools work for different kids, even within the same family. Choose the tools that work best for your children and your style of teaching.

[monocularvision]

This is what the HSLDA is for.

Colleges have become increasingly comfortable with accepting homeschool high school transcripts both because of their increasing regularity but also because of the actions of the HSLDA. One of the reasons we’ve been members for well over a decade.

[kej]

Having been homeschooled for high school myself, there are definitely people who won't accept anything that isn't official, but there are also people who just need to check a "received transcript" box on some form.

[bufordtwain]

My kids were homeschooled and had no problems getting into good universities and community colleges with their homeschool transcript.

[xnyan]

Most institutions in the US will accept a homeschool transcript. How much they will value that transcript is another question.

[js2]

Home schooled two kids, both in college now. My wife did their transcripts in Word. Accepted to North Carolina colleges w/o trouble.

[assimpleaspossi]

Both of my sons were homeschooled from third grade on. One graduated from the University of Missouri. The other from Roosevelt in Chicago.

[floydnoel]

Congrats on releasing this high school transcript generator. I believe it's an important tool for homeschooling families. Transcripts are a crucial part of a student's academic record, especially when it comes to college applications and other post-secondary opportunities. A tool like this could be a game-changer for many families navigating the homeschooling world, so thank you.

In the same vein, my spouse and I have developed an app called Logbook. It's a student activity tracker built to simplify homeschooling record keeping and reporting, integrating with Apple iCloud for secure data storage and syncing. It also supports exporting of student reports as PDFs. This simplifies the reporting burden for homeschool educators immensely. If anyone is interested in checking it out, our website is https://logbook-ed.com

I have considered building a transcript generator as part of our tool. We already keep the records and generate reports, but a transcript is pretty different to yearly education audit reports. I'm looking forward to giving this tool a try when the time comes, it may have saved me the trouble of building my own!

Again, thank you for your contribution to the homeschooling community.

[jeremyjacob]

At least have the integrity to write your self promotion by hand.

[Urgo]

This looks pretty neat! I'm going to link[1] the transcript we used for our homeschool just as another data point / option for those needing this. If we saw this sooner (our kids just graduated in June) though might have used this as the excel spreadsheet we used wasn't the easiest to work with at times. That said it was accepted by a four year state college so it does work at least!

[1] https://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/high-school-beyond/high-sch...