What Do I Do With This Senior?

We set out on our homeschooling jouney when our oldest son was in 2nd grade by saying, "We're going to take this year-by-year." Well, those years went by more like days. One day we were making salt maps of Egypt, reading Where the Wild Things Are, and hanging a styrofoam solar system from the ceiling. The next day we were visiting colleges and planning proms and graduation. The journey was full of joy, but the trip seemed to have been made on an express train. As we stood breathless at "Senior Station," I panicked! What do I do with this senior?

Oh, I was not totally unprepared. I had kept accurate records, followed a good course of study, and encouraged my son to participate in worthwhile extracurricular activities and volunteer work. But in those summer months before my son's senior year, I realized that now I had to help him choose a college, make applications, apply for scholarships and be accepted. All my fears and insecurities as a homeschool parent rose up, and all of my homeschool-negative relatives voiced my fears for me: "No college will ever accept your records as a basis for admission."

I felt I needed professional help. When I was a senior in high school, we had a guidance counselor to help us with college and scholarship applications. However, as a homeschooler under a very "hands-off" covering, my son had no such resource. Then I remembered meeting a college planner at a NCFCA debate tournament (another blog, another day).

I dug out her card and gave her a call. She began to meet with us monthly and was always on call to help us weed through all of the college junk mail and Fastweb scholarships. She helped us plan and arrange our college visits and tours. She guided us in developing a professional quality resume to present to the colleges. She showed us sample application essays and proofread my son's essays as he wrote each one. Even her smallest tips about what questions to ask admissions staff or how to write personal thank you notes to each contact person on campus, made a tremenduous impact on our confidence and success.

My son was eventually accepted at one of the 50 Colleges That Change Lives -- Birmingham-Southern College, with a Trustees scholarship. We give a great deal of credit to the help given to us by our college planner, Jill Howell of N2College Nationwide Consulting in Cullman, Alabama. She has helped students all across the nation to earn over $4,500,000.00 in scholarship funds. We met with her personally, but now she has developed a College Admissions/Scholarship Binder that can be used as an at-home, do-it-yourself tool for anyone. If you're feeling the senior panic, contact Jill at n2collegeconsult@bellsouth.net. Her website is under construction right now.