Three documents, every application, assembled by hand. Or one packet.
When is it due? The early deadlines land around November 1, the regular ones in early January, and by then the Common App has quietly made you a school official: the homeschooling parent acts as the student's counselor, and the School Report asks that counselor for a transcript, course descriptions, and a school profile. Most families build all three from scratch, in a word processor, the same month everything else is due.
Checked against the live packet page and the transcript builder, as shipped. Requirements on this page last reviewed October 4, 2026. The product as it runs today, read with the Common App School Report's counselor forms (last re-read Oct 16 2026), is always the source of truth.
What the packet holds
One print-ready document, rendered from the record you already keep: the issued transcript in a compact form, a course-description section built from each course's own name and notes, and a home-school profile frame where your grading scale and a few sentences about your approach print exactly as you type them. The words stay yours; the assembly is the part that stops costing you an evening.
The footer carries the transcript's verify link, so any reader can confirm the live record, free, with no account. That link is the difference between a document a reader takes on faith and one they can check.
If the transcript is not issued yet
Start at the transcript builder: the courses go in once, the transcript issues with its verify link, and the packet assembles itself from the same data. Entering a high-school record usually takes an evening. The quarterly paperwork, the activities list, and this packet all render from that one entry of the facts.
Questions families ask
What does the Common App ask a homeschool family for?
On the Common App, the homeschooling parent typically acts as the student’s counselor, and the School Report asks that counselor to upload a transcript, course descriptions, and a school profile. Three separate documents, assembled by hand, every application cycle, usually in October.
What is a home-school profile?
The one-page document a school would send about itself: how your home school grades, what a credit means, and a few sentences about your approach. For a homeschool, the parent writes it. The packet page gives it a clean frame; the words stay yours.
Is the packet really free?
Yes. The transcript, the course descriptions, and the profile frame render from the record you already keep, and the record is free for the learner, forever. The packet is a rendering of your own record, so it is free too, and it prints as one document.
How do colleges know it was not edited after the fact?
The packet’s footer carries the transcript’s verify link. Anyone you hand the packet to can open that link, free, with no account, and see the same record live.
Which rule requires these three documents?
No statute does. The Common App School Report for home-schooled applicants asks the counselor for them, and any further regulation is the receiving college’s own policy, stated on its admissions page. The packet follows the School Report’s three parts and nothing more.
What makes an admissions reader write back?
A transcript with no grading scale or credit definition, a year with course descriptions missing, or a profile that never says who taught and graded the work. Each one is a question the reader has to put to the family before the file is complete. The packet prints the scale and the credit rule on the transcript, keeps a description under every course, and asks the profile for the grader in its first lines.
What does a course description look like?
For example: Biology with lab, 1 credit, 2025 to 2026. A full year of general biology from a named text, weekly labs recorded in a notebook, three unit exams and a lab practical, graded by the parent on the 90 to 100 scale the transcript states. Two to four sentences per course is the norm, and the packet prints them under each course in transcript order.
We have not issued a transcript yet. Where do we start?
Start at the transcript builder: enter the courses once, issue the transcript, and the packet assembles itself from the same data. Entering a year of courses usually takes an evening, not a week.
Whose record it is
The record is yours: free for the learner, forever, and you take it with you. The packet is one rendering of it; the state paperwork, the activities list, and the verifiable transcript are others. Enter the facts once, and every door that asks for them in its own shape gets them from the same place.