Goddard College is the perfect path from homeschooling to a college degree
If you come from a homeschooling or unschooling background, you probably know what curiosity feels like. It lives in those questions that no one has been able to answer, the ambitious projects that are difficult to explain, the constant overlap between learning and living life.
Goddard’s Individualized Studies program is designed to support learners like you. There are no courses. There are no grades. Instead we create the spaces and structures that support you in finding your own path:
- It’s student-directed. Each semester, you identify your learning goals and design your curriculum with the support of experienced interdisciplinary scholars.
- It’s interdisciplinary. We understand that project-building and problem-solving rarely fits neatly into the containers of academic fields.
- It’s low-residency. You can live where you want to and live your life. Most students are working in the world and balancing a rich home life with full-time or part-time study.
- It’s personalized. Each student is creating a unique path, leading to a really original senior thesis. To support you along this path we take the time to get to know you as a whole person.
At the beginning of each semester, you sit down with a faculty advisor who asks you, “what are you curious about and why.” Together you build a set of “areas of study.” Then you identify learning goals, activities, resources, and points in your process where you will share ongoing work with your advisor for feedback and support. Throughout the semester, students and faculty remain in dialogue about the work. As a result, you can discuss the new ideas and emergent learning, the rabbit holes, discoveries, and transformations that always occur when we explore things that are close to our hearts. Faculty do not grade this exchange. Instead, both students and faculty write narrative evaluations of the learning.
If you need help with any part of your Godard application, please reach out to our admissions office and our counselors will connect with you.
Early College through the Vermont Home Study program
Goddard College’s partnership with the Early College program provides a unique state-funded opportunity for homeschoolers in Vermont. The Early College program pays for a Vermont high school senior or someone completing their final year of the Home Study program to attend a year of college at a participating institution, while completing their high school graduation requirements. Among the participating colleges, Goddard is unique in its commitment to student-directed, interdisciplinary learning.
For students who have participated in Vermont’s Home Study program, the process of co-designing areas of study will feel familiar. It is quite similar to Vermont’s Home Study forms (e.g. the Minimum Course of Study). In Goddard’s Early College program, you would have the opportunity to continue your self-directed learning. Now you can also bring your homeschool experience into conversation with a community of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners working in sustainability, socially engaged art, psychology, creative non-fiction, sexuality studies, music, social justice, education, theater, philosophy, documentary film, poetry, human ecology, and more.
Students that are already familiar with the independence and responsibility of homeschooling or unschooling have thrived in this environment. The artists, activists, thinkers, writers, and entrepreneurs that have emerged from this program demonstrate the incredible breadth of learning that is possible when people have the freedom to learn what matters to them.
The deadline to submit a Minimum Course of Study (MCOS) to the Vermont Agency of Education with your Early College plans is in early August. If you need any help putting this together, please reach out!