Ohio Homeschooling

Parents must have a high school diploma or equivalent. Otherwise, they must work under the direction of a certified teacher.

Reporting: An annual notice of intent must be submitted to the local superintendent. No other records are required.

Compulsory Attendance: Age 6 to 18; 900 hours per year

Required Subjects: Math, language arts, U.S. and state history, geography, physical education, health, arts, science and first aid.

Testing: Each year’s notice of intent must be accompanies by either standardized test scores, a written report demonstrating the student’s satisfactory progress or some other assessment approved by the local superintendent.

State Organization(s):
Christian Home Educators of Ohio (CHEO)
117 W. Main Street; Ste #103, Lancaster, OH 43130
Tel: 740-654-3331; F: 740-654-3337
http://www.cheohome.org – E-mail: Cheo@cheohome.org

Convention(s): CHEO sponsors an annual convention. See website for updates.
Cincinnati Homeschool Convention – Annual convention. Go to http://www.cincinnatihomeschoolconvention.com for updates.

When Colleges Come to Town

by Andrea van Niekerk, College Goals Consultant

Admission officers know that summer is over when they have to start planning their Fall recruitment travel.  As my office’s travel coordinator, I used to spend part of every summer assigning particular areas to specific admission officers in anticipation of that moment.  In many colleges admission officers will evaluate applications from the same areas to which they travel; in others, there may be little connection between their travel and their reading responsibilities.

Admission officers travel incredibly broadly – I knew where to find good barbeque in Kansas City and a Starbucks in Cairo!  When admission officers do travel all over the map like this, they will mostly participate in a combination of four activities: meeting local alumni groups, visiting a handful of high schools, doing public presentations to which kids from all over that city are invited (often with a group of similar schools), and attending local college fairs.

Given this travel schedule, there are a few things that students and parents may want to keep in mind:

• Once you are interested in a particular college, sign up on its mailing list.  Doing so will indicate your interest in the institution (and many schools track such interest because it has an impact on their yield).  It will also allow you to receive mailed information about that school’s travel plans – otherwise you should also look for this on their websites.
• When a college of interest visits your school, try and attend.  You can get your questions answered, but you will also be astonished by how often admission officers do recall students who introduced themselves and asked questions.  Make sure, of course, that they recall you for good reasons – like your informed questions and impeccable manners and not your poor behaviour or smart-aleck attitude!
• If colleges don’t visit your high school, do not read anything into that fact.  There are more than 35,000 high schools in the US alone, and the majority will never see an admissions visitor.  That does not mean that you are at a disadvantage once you apply – on the contrary, a college may be very happy to receive its first application ever from your high school! – but do take initiative and reach out to the college instead.
• When encountering an admission officer, you need to introduce yourself politely – yes, stick out your hand, say your name, and ask “how do you do”!  And you definitely want to get the representative’s name and email address.  Later, if you happen to have a question or simply want to let that school know of your burning desire to attend, you can email directly.  At many schools such correspondence will be added to an application folder, so make sure it is done well – check your spelling, don’t be silly, and suppress the need to lie, beg, or exaggerate.
• Finally, college fairs can be very useful or quite horrible, depending on how well you use them.  By all means learn more about places in which you are already interested, but take time to discover colleges you had never before considered.  The representative may be an admission officer or a local alumnus and their knowledge of the application process may differ as result, but they will be equally enthusiastic about answering questions about their college.  Do introduce yourself and get a name or a business card for future reference.  Some schools will still use contact cards to fill in, so make sure you take some address labels to stick on rather than waste time filling in information.   Do not line up in a row in front of the representative – many people will have exactly the same question, and it is exhausting when one has to repeat the same answer over and over again.  It also wastes time, so rather stand closer to the desk and listen to other people’s questions and answers.  One can learn as much from questions that you have not thought to ask yourself, as from the answers.  At the end of the event, you do not really want to be the very last person keeping that exhausted admission officer from his or her dinner, sleep or more hours of work.  But when the crowds thin, you can often find a few minutes to have your most substantive conversation of the event.  Make good use of the moment!

Copyright, 2010 by College Goals. Used by permission. (www.collegegoals.com)

Great Oaks offers information sessions for homeschool families

Homeschoolers living in one of the 36 southwest Ohio school districts have the option of attending a Great Oaks campus for their remaining two years of high school, and can become certified in a range of professional fields, such as biotechnology, practical nursing, culinary arts, and over 30 other subject areas, while earning college credit. A parents/student information session will be held on Thursday, December 15, at 7:00 p.m. at the Live Oaks Career Campus in Milford, Ohio.

To read the article, read here.