George Ehrhardt writes for the Martin Center about one problem related to the “one-size-fits-all” college application.

Unfortunately, the current application process—the Common App in particular—makes it more difficult to match students with institutions than it should, unnecessarily lowering the number of homeschoolers who attend college.

First, the application asks for information relevant to institutional schools, not homeschoolers. Some questions are obviously irrelevant, like class rank, but other mismatches are more subtle. College applications focus on the methods institutional schools use to sort students beyond simply GPA. Clubs offer an array of “leadership positions” and students are selected for special competitions, awards, or opportunities. On the one hand, those do offer admissions officers an easily comparable yardstick for most applicants, but they make homeschoolers hard to assess.

Equally important is what the Common App does not ask. What did a student actually do in his or her classes? While school-at-home families may produce educational outcomes similar to those assumed from a high school transcript, other families’ practices may not, and this can be valuable information. For example, my daughter’s Bio 101 course centered on designing and conducting a semester-long experiment instead of memorizing parts of the cell. Surely the faculty that designed the course would like to recruit students who flourished in experiential education settings, but the Common App has no obvious way for students to communicate that.

Second, the application itself is daunting.

Higher education professionals have experience with these questions and forms, so it may be difficult to understand how challenging point #1 makes the application process. How do I make a transcript? What goes on it? What is a weighted GPA? Should I weight? How do I weight? Can I add a statement about my pedagogy? Should I write a recommendation or ask others? What counts as a “school” award? Do my classes count as Honors?

None of these have obvious answers for parents who don’t already work in higher education. And looming over all of them is the fear, “What if I might be sabotaging my child’s hard work by doing the wrong thing?”