Hi, Linda-
I assume you’re speaking of a biology course with hands-on lab work. The requirement for that is usually about 160 hours, but I recommend checking the requirements of specific colleges your granddaughter is considering, as they may differ. She may want to consider taking an AP or CLEP test when she completes her study, in order to provide an objective confirmation of the grade on her transcript. I hope that’s helpful!
Blessings,
Janice

You can get it at http://www.TranscriptsMadeEasy.com. It’s available as a paperback book or as an instantly downloadable e-book.

The bookstore must not have had their “Books In Print” resource available;-).

Blessings,
Janice

Thank you, if you could e-mail me I would appreciate it.

donna

Thank you I really have my back up against the wall.

donna in Texas

Based on both my experience and my research, I assure you that colleges want to know IF your student has studied the classes required for admission. None of the counselors that I talked to had any issue about when a class was done, just whether it was done.

That said, I don’t think it’s necessary to point out exactly when the class was taken. Transcripts can be organized by subject, with all the classes of each subject listed in sequence. If someone has a student who does their first high school math in 7th grade, and their first high school English in 8th grade, those classes would appear as the first class of the subject sequence. Does that make sense?

If the student ends up taking more than the standard four credits worth of a subject, you can just record the four highest-level classes, if you’re more comfortable doing it that way. Colleges don’t usually mind seeing more credits than average, though. They realize that homeschoolers sometimes have expanded opportunities and are simply able to fit in more than a traditionally-schooled student.

Of course, if you’ve read much of my stuff, you know that I am a huge advocate of getting a jump start on college by taking CLEPs. After all, I wrote the book on it;-) [http://www.GetAJumpStartOnCollege.com]! All my boys did it, and it was a wonderful experience for our family. For us, anything else would have been a waste of their time.

Thank you for stopping by to comment!

If the goal is to show that the student TOOK the class, then sure, record when it was taken. But you can bet that an admission counselor who sees that Johhny took Calc in “4th grade” had better have an ACT or SAT to back that up if you want to get the credit!

A better thing to do is to have the student take CLEP and/or AP tests after finishing advanced classes. The CLEP scores can be banked for 20 yrs. Then there is high school AND college credit.

When I was in middle school, one of my friends was a boy who left school early several afternoons a week to go to high school (and eventually to college) to take all the higher math classes the middle school didn’t offer. Even the traditional schools didn’t see a point in wasting his time and holding him back when he was perfectly capable of doing the work. He was able to move forward quickly, and build upon a very wide knowledge base when he got to college.

It’s obvious that age is one of the least reliable ways to judge someone’s maturity (just think of the people you know– some are sober-minded from a very young age, while others think immaturely at 45).

Understanding and knowledge are based on the accumulation and connection of ideas, and some people are much better at it than others. Unfortunately, it seems that the ones who are least adept at knowledge accumulation are the ones who cling to arbitrary time schedules. If a student is excited about a subject and can easily understand it, forcing him or her to move slowly through it, at the pace of someone who doesn’t get it, is enough to permanently kill all interest and excitement.

It always makes me sad to see a young person held back and imprisoned within a rigid structure of age and grade, when many students are capable of so much more. It kills the spirit to be constantly frustrated and held back, and many students end up thinking that learning is boring and they want no more of it. They scrape by, doing the bare minimum, because busywork is substituted for knowledge, and they are not challenged or engaged.

The thing that ultimately matters is that knowledge is gained. It doesn’t matter when, where, or how. If a foundation of knowledge is laid, it can be built upon.

As I have evaluated academic essays over the years, I have seen dramatic proof of this. A widely-read 10-year-old from a literate family will almost always write a better, more insightful essay than a 16-year-old student who reads only for school assignments and does only age-graded written work.

As Charlotte Mason said, “education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.” If young people are allowed to accumulate knowledge as early as they are ready, and advance as quickly as they need to in order to remain challenged and engaged, there would be many, many students who truly enjoyed learning, and who understood that education is not in “doing school,” but is in doing life.