Home School

Lawrence welcomes applications from homeschooled students, who often find themselves particularly well-suited to take advantage of Lawrence's high degree of challenge through individualized coursework.

(In fact, homeschooled students annually compose the largest "school group" in our first-year class, usually numbering about seven to ten in each class.)

We recognize the important contributions made by homeschoolers both inside and outside the classroom, and we make a deliberate effort to accommodate the special circumstances of homeschoolers during the admissions process. This page outlines what we consider, along with some suggestions, for homeschoolers wishing to apply to Lawrence. (These may apply equally to applications for other colleges and universities.)

If you are completing your high school education under the umbrella of a diploma-granting organization, please submit evidence of the coursework completed and your level of performance.

If you are not connected with any such institution, you may submit your GED or HSED as evidence of completing a commonly-accepted body of secondary coursework.

In the absence of either transcript information, GED, or HSED, we have the challenging (but certainly not impossible) task of evaluating your work without having any statistical evidence comparing your performance and your choice of secondary curriculum to those of your peers. To help us evaluate your level of preparation for college-level work, please present us with a portfolio of the work you consider most indicative of your academic achievements. This may contain records such as:

• grades from community college or other post-secondary level courses that you may have taken
• scores from AP tests (these are also administered independently of schools)
• recommendations from qualified tutors or teachers
• examples of independent research
• evidence of completed units in science, mathematics or other academic subjects, or descriptions of books and other curricular materials used and mastered in preparation for college-level courses.

Although Lawrence University does not require applicants to submit standardized test results in their admission review, we have found such test results to be helpful in ascertaining our homeschooled applicants' academic preparedness. To that end, we encourage homeschooled students to submit their standardized test results with their applications for admission.

Letters of recommendation are particularly important for homeschooled applicants, and we encourage you to select your recommenders very carefully. They should be qualified to evaluate you not only as a student but as an individual and member of the community. They should be able to describe specific activities in which you participated together and to evaluate your performance through the eyes of experience and objective judgment. In the absence of conventional records, the only way we can understand what you bring to Lawrence is to have it explained clearly and without prejudice.