How Does a Homeschool Student Get a Diploma?

A High School Diploma is usually considered a must for admission into a college. It is a good idea to get in touch with a college counselor to get details of what kind of homeschool diploma will be acceptable to the college for admission purpose. For a homeschool student who may have completed the high school requirements at home, is it possible to get a formal diploma?

The most common practice for the parents to design and present the homeschool students with a diploma by themselves. In this case the homeschool is treated as an independent educational institution. The details include the name of the institution (i.e. the homeschool) issuing the diploma, name of the student,  city and state in which the diploma is issued, date, and a signature of the individual who has overseen the student’s education.

For some parents who may be associated with an online school or correspondence school, it may be possible to arrange a diploma from this educational institute as well. This will have the name of that specific school along with all the other details outlined in the passage above. It will be issued to the students who have enrolled for a specific course with the institute and have successfully completed it.

In extremely rare cases the parents may approach the local public school and ask about them issuing a high school diploma to their homeschool students. The educational institute will probably ask the student to undergo some testing in order to determine that the child is competent in the subjects that he or she is supposed to be graduating high school in. Usually this is not seen as public schools do not encourage homeschooling.

In some states it is possible for the homeschool student to obtain a high school diploma from the Department of Education. This is specially true of states where the homeschool parents must continuously update the department about the progress of their homeschooled children through the years. The years of transcripts and standard tests which are a must for this process serve as the basis of the allotment of the high school diploma.