FCIWYPSC

A tale of two colleges April 2, 2013

I quickly came to the realization, after coming up with a list of potential colleges for the older boy, that we should try to visit some campuses now.  I teach in the fall and taking time off during the week would only be possible around Thanksgiving, so this would be our last chance before applications are due.  We hurriedly put together an itinerary and are doing part 1 of the college tour.  (Part 2 will be in another, more distant state and will therefore have to occur during the summer sometime.)

The first college we visited was close to the top of the list.  It’s a nice state school in a great town, and the older boy was very psyched about the visit.  Everything sounded great on the tour, and the overview presentation only reaffirmed that it would be great.  Then, however, we talked to an admissions counselor.  We explained that older son has his GED, has done or will soon finish all the necessary testing, and that most of his curriculum was courses that he CLEPed.

The counselor informed us that we needed to do the whole transcript thing and affirm that he had taken four years of English, math, etc.  I took a deep breath and then asked, “But, does he really have to have four years of English classes, for example, when he’s already demonstrated he can do college-level work in the area?”

“Yes, the tests show he has some knowledge, but we need to see that he’s done the work.”

My first reaction was to wonder who in the world could really pass these tests without doing the work, in some form or another.  Second, I wondered why bother saying you accept a GED if this is what is required.  Third, I got angry.  Is education really about parking your butt in a seat for four years and not so much about learning anything?  Is that what will be expected of him at this college?

The worst reaction was when I looked at the older son and saw his face fall.  ”Oh no,” I thought.  ”I’ve totally screwed this kid over.  How will he get into college?  Did I just mess up his life because of insistence that he become prisoner to my educational values while ignoring pragmatism?”  Of course, that’s utterly ridiculous.  When you’re dealing with a kid who is gifted and learning disabled, the best way to ruin his or her life is to leave them in a situation where they are obviously miserable and non-functioning, which then destroys their self-confidence and motivation.  No, I got him into a situation where he was learning and was able to demonstrate that using objective criteria.

Still, after that meeting, the older boy and I were both awfully bummed.  After hearing a similar but slightly less uptight message at another school, I started wondering if maybe we needed to worry less about other criteria and find some places that were more friendly to homeschoolers.  I’ve realized that we really need to talk to admissions counselors at each of these schools and see if there’s even any point in him applying if they’re going to be extremely skeptical of his accomplishments.

Today, we may have hit the jackpot, however.  After getting an overview of this school’s very flexible and creative approach to education, we talked with someone about the older boy’s background and what we’d been doing for schooling.  Rather than the reaction we had been getting, they said it sounded like he was rather accomplished.  They were fine with his GED, saying that gave them a very good normative comparison, and were impressed with his accomplishments thus far with his CLEPs.  That college is, as of right now, at the top of older son’s list.  He’s really happy to have found a place that doesn’t view getting a degree as simply a matter of checking off items on a list of requirements.

All of this made me curious.  I never knew why he had issues in high school, but it was obvious that once he took his GED and started studying for his CLEPs that he was suddenly excited about learning.  I decided to ask him.  His response was that he hated how you had to do everything together in high school.  The stuff that was easy, they would drag out forever.  When they got to stuff that he wanted to look at more carefully or had trouble understanding, he said they’d rush through it.

“College is a lot different, though,” he said.  ”You’re expected to do a lot of work on your own, so I’ll be able to spend a lot more time when I feel like I need to and, if the class is going slow, I can spend my study time working ahead.”

Apparently something sunk in as he knows he can take responsibility for his own learning.  That, in my mind, is very much the point.  Education shouldn’t be just a process that happens to you.