Are you a homeschooled adult without access to records of your homeschooling and graduation?
Were you homeschooled during your teen years but don’t have documentation of your learning?
You are not alone.
As homeschooling has become more popular, some graduates are finding themselves without the transcript or diploma they need to pursue an educational or employment opportunity. These important documents have gotten lost, were never created, or were never handed over to the young homeschooled high school graduates. Now, homeschooling parents may be deceased or unable to assist their adult kids with the needed records.
Most parents are proactive in creating documents such as diplomas and homeschool transcripts, and most do a good job of providing their teens with hard copies and digital copies they can access any time in the future. These parent-generated documents are accepted by most colleges and employers, and along with outside evidence that a student is well-prepared, they reflect high school learning well.
We do remind parents to take responsibility for helping homeschool grads have permanent access to their permanent records. We even provide a free template for creating a homeschool transcript, and we explain all the ins and outs.
But sometimes there are glitches. Your apartment floods and ruins your homeschool paperwork; a hard drive isn't backed up when the computer dies; a parent becomes ill before creating your transcript.
Where you might find your transcript
If you are a homeschool graduate who can't find your transcript, there may not be an easy way to find it. That said, we have some suggestions that may help:
- Search your email in case your parent emailed a digital version of your transcript to you at some point. You may have also emailed your transcript to someone else years ago, like when applying for a job or signing up for a class.
- Look for a digital version of your transcript on your Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox or a hard drive or backup you may have of your parent's computer.
- Look among important paper documents (such as birth certificates) that your parent may have kept in a bank safe deposit box or fire safe.
- Check with your parents' friends to see if they may have a copy. It's a long shot, but parents do sometimes share documents as examples for each other.
- Ask at your co-op or church. If you homeschooled through a co-op, umbrella school, online school, or other organization, find out if they are still in existence and whether anyone might have a copy of your transcript. If an organization was associated with a church, check to see if the church might have a file with your transcript.
- Check with Parchment to see if they may have your transcript. Individual homeschooling parents can't upload documents to Parchment, but your parent may have used a transcript preparation service or cover school of some kind, and that organization may have a Parchment account that saves documents.
- Check with your state homeschool organization. Some of these organizations provide transcript preparation services for pay, and they may have retained a copy of your transcript if your parent used their service.
- Ask education officials. Most states and localities do not receive or keep graduation records for homeschoolers, but a few do. Check with the state homeschool org in the state where you were homeschooled to see if your state department or education or local school division might have records due to unique requirements there.
- Check with institutions. Did you ever apply to college or for a job where you had to submit your transcript? Check with the institution to see if they may have a copy of your transcript on file. If you ever planned to take classes at community college, you or your parent might have submitted your transcript, even if you never actually enrolled in classes.
Create your own transcript
Keep in mind that at its most basic, a transcript is a record of your studies, the story of your high school learning. If you are not able to find a copy of your transcript, or your parent never gave you a transcript, you can explore whether a self-made transcript might be accepted or helpful for your particular circumstance.
If you do create your own transcript, be honest and forthright about the document being self/student-generated, leaving blank anything you don't remember. You may not know any of your grades, or you may remember them. A partial transcript may be better for you than no transcript at all—or, unfortunately, your self-made transcript may not work at all for the purposes you need it for.
If you prepare the transcript yourself and your parent is still alive, perhaps they have notes and memories about your learning and can collaborate with you on completing an accurate transcript. At the least, you can ask them to edit for accuracy and sign the document you create. This would create an official high school transcript for you.
Instead of a high school transcript
Many community colleges are open admission but require a high school diploma or the equivalent to enroll.
While a GED is not usually needed by homeschool grads who have a diploma and transcripts in hand, getting your GED or HiSET credential may be another angle to pursue. These credentials can help you gain admission to community college and some other colleges. Then you can begin building a college transcript.
You may be able to get an authentic learning review and transcript generation from an alternative private high school. Wes Beach of Beach High School in California provided this kind of service until his retirement.
You may be able to find something similar, although this is a pretty niche service and may not be available in all states. You want to be careful not to use a diploma mill that provides false documents without review of your learning.
Depending on where you live, you may find helpful information by searching adult high schools, credit recovery programs for adults, prior learning assessments, adult portfolio assessments, and alternative high schools.
Some colleges may allow you to enroll in one class at a time for a limited time as a non-degree seeking student. If you do well in the class, you may be able to transition to a degree-seeking student based on your performance. Read the fine print carefully.
If your records were lost, inquire further with the prospective employer or institution about what kind of documentation may be acceptable for their use. Whatever agency needs the document may have a policy about acceptable alternatives if important documents have been lost or destroyed, which does happen from time to time.
If you manage to find your records
If you manage to come up with your diploma or transcript, take steps now to secure them for the next time you may need them.
- Scan and save to your photos or files on your phone, tablet, and computer.
- Email the documents to yourself.
- Save in the cloud and share with siblings and or a friend. (It's like giving someone the spare key to your apartment in case of a lockout).
- Print copies and place them with your social security card and birth certificate.
Whether you lost your homeschool graduation documents or they were never given to you, being without them is a burden. We understand the challenges this creates and will continue our campaign to get every homeschooling parent with teens to create and secure their graduates' permanent records—permanently.
A popular speaker at homeschooling conferences, business groups, and parents’ groups, Jeanne Potts Faulconer homeschooled her three sons in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia for twenty years. Holding her Master of Arts degree in Communication, Jeanne conducted portfolio evaluations for Virginia homeschoolers for evidence of progress for many years. Jeanne is a former college faculty member, former editor for several publications, news correspondent for WCVE, and former director of Brave Learner Home. She is the contributing editor for TheHomeSchoolMom newsletter and writes the popular Ask Jeanne column addressing homeschool parents' questions here at TheHomeSchoolMom.
I am taking care of a young lady who was thrown out of her parents home. She is 21 years old and she was home schooled. She does not have a diploma or a transcript. Her parents would never let her go to college so she didn't think it mattered. I am willing to pay for her to go, so I want to get her admitted. She is smart and I know she did well but I have no way to prove it. I know her mother reviewed other people's portfolio's in Pennsylvania. We are in Florida and the mother refuses to have any contact with her.
Hi Katherine,
This young woman is fortunate to have you as her ally. I'm sorry to hear she does not have the documents she needs. This is troubling when parents don't understand the potential future need for a transcript, but there is another level of pain when a young person believes a parent may have been intentional in not providing important documents.
Could you help her create a self-reported transcript that would reflect her high school years? You may be able to ask her questions to help her recall her learning. She may actually know some of this right off the top of her head: "Yes, I did algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2." Start there and see what else she can recall. Ask her questions about what she read and wrote and learned. This could be put into a transcript format which she can sign, making clear this is self reporting. (I don't have specific guidelines or suggestions here. I'm just saying that such documents should not be misleading. Honesty is important on academic documents).
My understanding of community college policies where I live is that while a high school transcript is required for admission, admission is basically open enrollment and not based on completing specific requirements. They do use the transcript to help place a student in appropriate level classes. I cannot predict whether a community college in my state or yours or anywhere else will enroll a student who offers a self-reported high school transcript, but if that becomes a question, you could ask administrators what they would do in case someone's high school records were destroyed in a natural disaster, a fire, etc. The student could also offer to take placement tests.
If she is able to enroll in community college and have several good semesters (or she could earn her associate degree), she will probably find four-year institutions will be happy to accept her as a transfer student. (Some of my own kids used this approach despite having parent-generated transcripts and they were also a little older than 18, and it was the right approach for them).
If the community college continues to look askance at a self reported transcript, she could take the GED or HiSET after asking what they prefer.
Community college counselors are typically in the business of helping students get admitted rather than keeping them out, so they should be able to offer options to a student who is seeking a college degree.
Yes, this could require extra hoop jumping, which is unfortunate, but she sounds like she has your support, which is so valuable.
Sending best of luck to both of you as you help her sort this out.
Any parents who are reading along: PLEASE provide transcripts for your high school students and prevent this kind of anguish.
Looking forward,
Jeanne
I want to add that she should put the date when she completed high school homeschool on her self reported transcript. Often, "date of graduation" is something an institution or employer needs to see.
Looking forward,
Jeanne
I been working as CNA and medication administrator finally got a job in hospital as PCT been there almost 4 weeks and now they say can't verify my homeschool from 23 yrs ago! What can I do keep my job
Give the suggestions in the article a try. Sometimes it takes "educating" administrators about how homeschool records work, so they don't expect to find them in a centralized repository with a school division. Providing your own documents is the best bet in this situation. Good luck!