As a homeschooled student, your application will undergo the same process as every other applicant—including the same careful attention from several members of our professional admissions staff. Decisions are made only after review by a committee of these officers. In each case, admissions officers are weighing many components of your background: academic achievement and rigor, intellectual curiosity, extracurricular distinction, special talents and abilities and many others.
As part of your application, homeschooled students must send a copy of their curriculum for the past four years. If you have been following an accredited homeschool program, you must provide us with that program’s published curriculum. If you have been taking courses at a local college or other educational institution, have the official transcript from that experience submitted to Columbia. Please provide as much detail about your curriculum’s content as possible.
If you have taken classes at a local college or university or had an instructor or tutor brought in to teach one or more particular subjects, that instructor should write the recommendation letter. Otherwise, your homeschooling instructor may write it, even if they are your parent.
Homeschooled students should follow our Testing Policy. Advanced Placement (AP), SAT Subject Test and other optional subject-proficiency exams are not required by Columbia, but we will accept your results if you choose to submit them. While you will not be at a disadvantage in our admissions process should you choose not to take these optional tests or submit the results, your scores can assist the Committee on Admissions in evaluating content knowledge and mastery in individual disciplines.
