Five Common Questions Homeschool High School Parents Want To Know

Each week, I receive a lot of questions from homeschool parents ranging from all kinds of topics, but many regarding high school and college entrance requirements. Do you ever feel that you don’t know what you don’t know? I’m sure I did when I was raising my homeschool kids. I thought I’d list out the common questions I receive in the hopes of helping others who are on this same journey.

Here are the top five questions I receive frequently.

How do I apply for the FAFSA and the HOPE Scholarship in Georgia?

Usually, one of the first questions homeschool parents ask me has to do with how to get college scholarships. The price of college has of course skyrocketed so this is an understandable concern.

1. Typically the FAFSA opens each year on October 1st. However, this past school year (applying for the 2024-2025 college year), it was delayed because they were making a bunch of changes to it. So it was late opening and actually opened for the next school year at the end of December 2023. You can look for announcements about the FAFSA on this page. When you fill it out, you must be careful of the date. You are filling it out the year before you want to use it. So in 2023-2024 school year, you fill out the FAFSA for the 2024-2025 school year.
2. Many colleges require their applications to fill out the FAFSA, whether or not you are planning to take out federal loans. They will contact you many times and remind you to fill out the FAFSA during your senior year of high school while you are applying to colleges.
3. In the state of Georgia, we have the HOPE and Zell Scholarships. If you believe your student qualifies for one of these scholarships, your college may require you to fill out the FAFSA to receive either scholarship.
4. If you end up taking out federal loans, then you’ll need to fill it out every year. If you are not taking out federal loans, then you can stop filling out the FAFSA after the first time and instead fill out the GSFAPPS on the GA Futures website. The GSFAPPS is for the HOPE/Zell scholarship and you only have to fill it out once. It stays valid for 10 years.

My kid is behind in math and may not graduate on time. What can I do?

It is very common to have questions about homeschool situations where a student might be behind in math and the parent is concerned about how to make sure they graduate on time.

One Option: Finish A Math in the Summer

• Let’s say you have Algebra I already but have not finished Geometry or Algebra II and you are a junior and it’s spring of Junior year. You need 4 total math credits to graduate. So, as you can see, this student is a bit behind. What should a parent do? There are several options you can take.
• You could try to rush them through and complete EITHER Geometry or Algebra II by summer so that you would have a total of 2 credits on your list before fall. This depends on how far they’ve made it into Geometry or Algebra II and how good they are at math. Most students who are behind are probably not great at math and that’s part of the problem. But say that this is an option because you’ve been working hard all spring and you’re halfway done with one more math.
• Now you would have two math credits, but you need 4, and it’s senior year.

Second Option is to Dual Enroll During Senior Year

• If your workload is not too much with your other courses for senior year, you could dual-enroll two maths – one in the Fall and one in the Spring. And then you’d have 4 credits and could graduate on time.  When you dual enroll, each college class counts as a year of high school. So you can easily make up some time if you’re at the level where you could dual enroll.
• If dual-enrolling seems like a possibility, I would recommend College Algebra and maybe Statistics or Consumer Math.  A good reason to dual-enroll College Algebra is to review Algebra I and II and also it would function as an SAT/ACT math prep course as well. College Algebra would not cover all the math on the standardized tests, but it would be a great review of the algebra section. Here are a couple of online options that I recommend when people are short on time for registering and enrolling in Dual Enrollment.
  • Toccoa Falls College (online DE) has open enrollment so even if you made this decision in early summer, you could still enroll. They have a general college math (MAT 113) and College Algebra (MAT 133).  
  • Another option is Arizona State University (online DE). Some of their courses are self-paced and some have start dates. So depending on the course, you could potentially add two math courses into senior year.
• If you don’t want to do Dual Enrollment, but would prefer to work on high school level math, one place to check out would be Laurel Springs (laurelsprings.com). They have a Discrete Math that’s more like life skills math that can be taken after Algebra II or College Algebra. They also have a Probability and Statistics. These two courses would be at the high school level, not college level. I am sure there are other online places as well and you could do the same idea there.

A Third Option: Take Consumer Math

• You can also count the Dave Ramsey Foundations in Personal Finance course as consumer math and work on that all year next year for 1 of the 2 math credits. And then you would only need 1 more, so you could do one of the above options I mentioned for your final math credit.

A Fourth Option: Graduate A Year Late and Take Your Time

• If this feels too rushed and you would prefer to instead graduate a year later, then your student would be a 5th-year senior. We would just change his transcript to show the correct dates for senior year and then work the dates backward until 9th grade. Any courses taken in 8th grade that were high school level could still be labeled as high school courses taken in middle school.  Then he can take his time and have an additional year to complete his math courses. That is the beauty of homeschooling!

Are there any Dual Enrollment programs you recommend?

I am commonly asked questions by homeschool parents about where to dual enroll. Yes, I am happy to share what colleges others have enrolled at that have worked for them. Locally, we always recommend Kennesaw State University or Chattahoochee Technical College (or any of the other technical colleges if you live closer such as Gwinnett, Lanier, West Georgia) if you’re interested in going to in-person classes.

• Other colleges people have used successfully:
  • Toccoa Falls College (online)
  • Truett McConnell University (online)
  • University of North Georgia
  • Georgia Highlands College
  • Perimeter College/GA State University

The above colleges mentioned are all in the state of Georgia and you can use funding to receive up to 30 hours of college credit for free.

If you have run out of funding or have some specific circumstances, you may also want to check into Arizona State University’s Universal Learner program for dual enrollment. You can read my other posts about dual enrollment here.

Do you have some resources for helping my rising 11th-grade daughter prep for the SAT/ACT, especially in Math or any math curriculum you recommend? 

I have a list of resources on my website at intentionalarrows.com.  Here’s a link to it: https://intentionalarrows.com/?s=SAT+resources.

With my own kids, after we finished with Saxon, we moved to Shormann Math, and it worked well for us.  The website is Diveintomath.com.

Then we dual-enrolled when they were ready. I’ve heard someone say recently that dual enrolling College Algebra helped their student increase their math score on the SAT/ACT.  My kids dual enrolled Pre-Calculus to start and then moved to higher math if they were ready for it. 

My student took a class one day a week without homework. How should I count it?

One of the other questions homeschool parents ask if how to count courses that are more like clubs. If a class is only one day a week without homework, I would consider this class a club. You would not list it on the high school transcript. Instead, you would put it on the college application under outside activities/involvement.  If she can work up to being a leadership role in it, then that’s even better for the college application. I have a resume template you can use to guide you as you make a list for the college applications. You can find it here: https://intentionalarrows.com/2018/06/13/resume-for-students/

I hope this helps you as you consider some of these commonly asked questions I receive each week. As always, send your questions in and let me know how I can help you!

Blessings,

Michelle