Create a High School Transcript for Your Home School

Student and teacher/parent have put in a lot of hard work by the senior year of high school. Now it is time to translate all those accomplishments into a written record for college admissions staff and scholarship selection committees. Just follow this simple process to create an official transcript.

Gather Your Home School Records

Collect your student's academic records from grades nine through twelve. If your child did high school work such as geometry in junior high, include those records as well. The reports from ACT or SAT exams are also good to include on a transcript. Using these records, make two lists: courses grouped by subject area and courses grouped by academic year.

Classify Non-Standard Course Work

Conventional classes taken at a brick-and-mortar school or online can simply be listed with their titles and the number of credits. As a home school student, however, much of the student's work may have been in the form of unit studies which integrate several subjects. A private school in my area has integrated "Humanities" courses that include both history and English; these humanities courses receive one grade, but the course is shown as two separate courses on report cards and official school transcripts in order to avoid confusion on the part of college admissions departments. Thus an A in Humanities II becomes: English II – A and World History II – A. You can classify several unit studies together and apportion the hours into standard course descriptions based on the percentage of time spent in various topics; For example, a half-credit course in Art, one credit of Composition and World Literature, and one credit of World History may be shown on the transcript to record a year-long integrated study of the Renaissance.

Internships may also be included as course work. Has your student spent significant amounts of time volunteering in a children's ministry and gone to a regional conference on teaching methods? Call that Internship in Child Development. A trip to South America to help build an orphanage or teach Bible School (and the preparation/training needed beforehand) becomes Spanish Conversation. For unique experiences, attach to the transcript a separate sheet offering a paragraph description of activities and a reading list for courses that don't fit into the typical list of high school courses.

Dual-enrollment courses taken at a local community college or online university should be included on the transcript as honors courses. Include a weighted GPA on your transcript because an A in a college course counts more than an A in a high school course. A student who does well in honors and college courses should have a weighted GPA considerably higher than the regular GPA. For example, a college Spanish course that covers the same material as a high school Spanish III course can be listed on the transcript as Honors Spanish III. On a four-point grading scale, an A in this course would count as four points for the regular GPA, but five points for the weighted GPA.

Create the Document

Teascript is the service I used to create my students' official high school transcript. It offers a free template for organizing class work by year or by subject. I grouped classes by subject, making it easy to tell at a glance that each had completed the requisite units in science, English, and mathematics. If you wish to make transcripts for more than one student or to include features such as a weighted GPA, Teascript allows you to upgrade to a premium version for a modest fee.

Print multiple copies of the transcript, since you will need enough for all college applications and scholarship applications. Keep a copy on your computer and on a separate flash drive in addition to a paper copy. The parent-teacher's signature in ink makes a transcript official.