Welcome to our blog! I thought for sure I'd be done blogging about homeschool when our youngest finished her senior year. I might've been wrong!
Note: Before we go any further, you need to know I was asked to write up a review (for pay) of my experience with the website/company I'm sharing with you today. But my comments reflect my actual experience. This is the first time I'm doing this. I make no guarantees.
Let's Talk About Transcripts
What it is:
a record of your student's courses over the course of their high school career.
What it should include:
the courses
final grades for those courses (either letter or percent)
credits earned for the courses
GPA each quarter, as well as overall
major test scores (if applicable), like ACT, SAT, etc.
a grading scale
Why your student needs one:
Every institution for further education that I know of requires this record before they'll consider your student for enrollment.
You Want Me to Send What From Where?
Our youngest daughter was the only one of our three who chose an out-of-state college. She also doesn't test well, so we opted to skip SAT and ACT testing, knowing that even if she did take them, she'd end up in remedial courses anyway.
Even with all that, we found a school that offered online courses in a major she was kinda interested in. Yeah, no school offers online courses for the actual cool jobs, like geology. In the current digital age, I find this utterly insane.
Anyway, she chose an online school, set herself up with a major that would at least get her going in a general geological direction, and then hit a roadblock. They wanted her transcripts.
I had that. But it wasn't enough for me to send them a copy, or even a notarized copy. I needed to have it mailed from a third party.
So Now What?
And so began my search for a third party option that would work with homeschoolers. In case you were wondering, there are companies set up in three states, none of them mine. That's all I could find at the state level. And to be honest, I was trying to find the least expensive route because we are on a strict budget and our daughter isn't one to get scholarships, since the only ones she'd qualify for require writing a smashing great essay and she isn't really a writer. She's not interested in trying to be a really great writer, either.
So I called our local school board office. They were super nice and actually listened to what I said about having a transcript and needing to send it through a third party. They directed me to the state department of education.
So I emailed the state DoE. The reply was polite, but told me they didn't keep transcripts for homeschool students, that it was the responsibility of the homeschool parents to keep those records. This was info I already knew and had stated in the email I sent to them.
So I emailed again and made my request in clearer language. The person who emailed back replied that they were uncomfortable giving me any information as they really didn't know what direction to give. I found that unbelievable since this was the state transcript office.
Until I checked out the job description for that person. It's absolutely insane what they have to do in that job. They aren't getting paid enough.
I called our local school board office back and while she was polite, she really had nothing new to tell me. I had been hoping that if I got a notarized transcript, they could send it to the school. That would be too easy, though.
(This section's paragraphs are so memeable...but I don't wish to digress.)
Now You Know You Need One Sent From a Third Party.
How do you accomplish that? What third party?
I did find it interesting that the logo is singular, but the site address is plural. In any case, here's what I discovered.
There's a sample transcript you can look at without creating an account, which is helpful. With that, you could choose to create your own document to keep track through high school, then input it all on the website at a later date. I would just caution you to create a printout and/or backup to the cloud so you don't lose it.
The first thing I noticed was the 30-day free trial. You can't print anything, or send out a transcript, but you can create one. (It was also a comfort to know that even if you pay for a subscription and it runs out, the transcript stays there.)
When you're ready to decide on a plan that's right for you, there are three options. I chose basic, since our youngest daughter was the only one of our kids who wanted to apply outside the state we live in, we don't do class rank, and she's not even trying for scholarships. So our plan was $17.99.
What sold me on this company was the fact that they give you the option of either email or snail mail transfer of transcripts. Since the school she wanted to go to required snail mail, this was the only transcript website I found which offered that.
All that's left is to fill out the info.
Is It Hard?
Absolutely not! Their document is super easy to fill out. They walk you through each step. Simply fill in the blanks.
When you get to the section for each school year's courses, I recommend choosing one from the drop down menu they offer. They've put a lot of effort into helping homeschoolers craft a transcript that won't get immediately tossed out.
When inputting grades, they make that simple, too. I chose to use letter grades and put in the grading scale which I used. Their GPA calculator did the rest.
There are also spaces to input test scores and class rank. I felt like it would be lying to rank her first in class since she was the only one in her class. She'd technically rank in the upper middle somewhere, I think, but I just left that off. And I already talked about her and tests, so we skipped that, too.
The Transcript Is Complete. Now What?
Now that the transcript is filled out and you've chosen the right plan for your student, all you have to do is choose the school to send it to. We haven't actually gotten that far yet because our daughter changed her mind about the school.
We did, however, need to get her set up on Parchment, which is the third party company that mails/emails out the transcripts. The awesome folks at Fast Transcripts sent us clear directions on how to do that, along with a handy link to get started. It was so easy, I almost questioned whether I'd followed the directions correctly.
Since our daughter opted out of that school she'd chosen, we're now looking for online Christian college options. What's disappointing is we're failing miserably. Hopefully, that will be an option soon.
One last thing before I go -- When you set up your subscription, be certain you use the same email address you used to set up your account and password for the site. My brain did an ADHD thing and I used a different email for that. When I contacted them, they walked me patiently through the process to fix that, too.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this whole transcript process could've been easier for my family if I'd know about this company years ago. I surely wish I had known about it.
If you're looking for help with your high schooler's transcripts, then I highly recommend giving them your business.
They get a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating from our family.
See y'all the next time I have something helpful or useful to share with homeschool families.
Until then, y'all keep learning!
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