For your encouragement and inspiration: this page is dedicated to stories about Canadians, mainly from Ontario, who were homeschooled through high school and went on to successfully enter postsecondary studies in Canadian colleges and universities.
Anca’s Story:
“I started my B.A. at McMaster and graduated Summa Cum Laude four years later, after which I did a Master’s degree at Brock University (focusing on health promotion during the postpartum period). Now I am at UWO [University of Western Ontario]. As far as I can tell, everyone who has gone to university after being homeschooled has gone about it a different way. In Brantford, there was something at the time called “Alternative Learning Centre.” It was a continuing education centre which offered distance courses. The majority of students were adults who had not completed high school and wanted to go back and get their grade 12 diploma or young adults who had dropped out of regular school but were still taking a few courses at a time. When I was in grade 12, my parents met with someone there and showed/explained to them what I had done for high school. They were impressed and gave me “equivalency credits.” They also recommended that I take OAC (grade 13 at that time) courses from them so that I receive official marks and be eligible for an entrance scholarship. In order to compete for the best students, most universities offered an entrance scholarship to all students whose Gr. 13 marks were above a certain cut-off. At the time, I believe it was $2000 for over 90%, $1000 for 85-89% and $500 if your average was 80-84%. I took the 6 required courses, which I completed at home with my parents’ instruction and only took in to be marked by their teachers. My average ended up being around 93%. They also issued me an official transcript, which I used to apply and which showed the six credit courses I had taken and “24 equivalency credits” for grades 9-12.
My sister, however, did it a completely different way. She took no official courses and therefore had no official transcript. At the time of her application to UWO, my mother had to write a very complete report of every course she had taken, what topics were covered, the dates that she studied those subjects, and her final mark in every course. Because my sister pursued musical studies (violin performance), an audition was also part of the admittance procedure.
I know of others who have gone on and I am pretty sure a detailed report was part of the process. Although I don’t think it was the case when we applied, most universities now have detailed requirements for homeschooled students Checklist for Homeschooled Applicants-2. Although my sister did submit a report, she did not do any SAT testing so they either waived that or it wasn’t required at the time.
