Home-schooled students 'thrive in our diverse classrooms' at Houston's College of Biblical Studies

As parents consider education alternatives for their children due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some have chosen full-time home schooling, and several Texas colleges and universities are already prepared for these students.

In-state, the University of Texas has been called “home-schooler friendly” by Homeschool.com, while all public universities in Texas are required by law to treat home-schooled applicants the same as students from other educational backgrounds. 

Melinda Merillat, public relations and communications executive director at the Houston-based College of Biblical Studies (CBS), told Education Daily Wire that home-schooled students come to college well-prepared.

“Our experience with home-school students is that many home-schoolers have been trained to be successful in the academic classroom, which prepares them for a college environment,” she said. 

In fact, home-schooled students are well-known for outperforming peers in public school, and the academic freedom of a home-schooled environment, coupled with direct parent-teacher's attention, plays a significant role.

Merillat said that any number of factors explain why home-schooled students fair so well in college, but that they have found home-schooled students often exceed classmates in academic studies. They also do well with classmates of varied ages and backgrounds that they encounter through CBS.

“They thrive in our diverse classrooms,” she said. “The majority of our students are adult learners, and home-schoolers sit alongside classmates of all ethnicities and ages which enhances their knowledge and respect for other cultures.”

Merillat said that home-schooled students are a welcome part of college communities because of what they bring and how well they fit in.

“Home-school students tend to stand out in a positive way because they are often independent, self-motivated learners who may be ahead in school,” Merillat said. “The warm, faith-based CBS learning community aligns well with their past experiences and their college expectations.”

Home-schooling may also offer advantages for those setting their sites on advanced higher education with colleges such as Harvard, according to coverage by Business Insider. Ivy League institutions are increasingly seeing benefits to adding home-schoolers to student bodies, and are actively recruiting them.

Research suggests that home-schooled students experience lower anxiety and transition more easily into college life than their non-home-schooled counterparts.

While home-schooled students applying to Texas public colleges cannot, by law, be asked to fulfill any additional requirements beyond what other students are asked, Brittney Dorow, assistant dean of admission at Colgate University, said that it is helpful for students to provide a detailed transcript showing their academic trajectory, according to coverage by U.S. News. They are also encouraged to explain why they were home-schooled, as private institutions are not prohibited from discriminating against homeschoolers.

Home-schooled students can also benefit from taking standardized test such as the SAT, which admissions officers consider in gauging where students from different educational backgrounds fall, U.S. News reported.