I think the main thing for junior year is getting the best grades you can. That year’s grades seem to bear an unreasonable amount of weight to the colleges. The colleges might make their decisions before the first semester senior year grades even get to them…

If the girls are willing, starting essays during the summer before senior year isn’t a bad idea. When they don’t have other coursework, you know? Colleges don’t always announce the prompts until later in the summer, but the prompts for the Common Application, at least, don’t seem to change much. Even having the girls look at previous prompts and freewrite on them over the summer might help. That might give them some direction about what their best topics might be, when it comes time to writing them.

No, they shouldn’t run for the hills. But if they did, I know they’d be fast.

One of the best ideas I learned from her book was to cluster what my son was already doing into “classes”. That way I could write up a fairly traditional-looking transcript, but then give course descriptions that showed the eclectic learning he was doing as a homeschooler.

And yes, the earlier you start, the easier it will be. And you’ll feel more relaxed about the whole process.

Many of H’s homeschooling friends have gone the community college route. If you transfer in from a community college, you can probably bypass the whole high school transcript, but I’m not sure. In writing one for H., I found The Homeschooler’s Guide to Portfolios and Transcripts by Loretta Heuer to be quite helpful.