Homeschooler Gets CNN's Attention

A CNN Newsource crew was on campus Wednesday and yesterday filming a segment for a November series that will focus on home schooling.

The four-part series will examine various aspects of home schooling. It will cover both home-schooled students now at college and the Internet's influence on home schooling.

According to a news statement from the Atlanta-based news network, Harvard was picked because CNN found it "interesting how home schoolers were achieving such heights."

While on campus this week, Newsource interviewed David P. Illingworth '71, associate director of financial aid, and Braxton J. Robbason '97-'98, a home-schooled student from Vermont.

The interview with Illingworth focused on how the applications of home-schooled students are evaluated.

"In the Harvard admissions process we're looking at the individual results of any education method," not the method as a whole, Illingworth said in an interview with The Crimson.

CNN spent the day visiting with Robbason and his parents, who came down from Vermont, at his Davis Street house in Cambridge. Newsource also toured his workplace, the Center for Astrophysics. They also filmed Robbason and his friends at the John Harvard statue.

Newsource tried to get a first-person perspective on home schooling. Reporters asked Robbason questions such as what he would do differently, how home schooling had worked and what about home schooling had hindered him.

Robbason believes that Newsource choose to interview him because he is a "success story for home schooling."

Very few home-schooled students attend Harvard. Illingworth estimates that there are only 30 to 40 in the undergraduate population. Illingworth said all students should apply and stressed that each admitted student had "something great in their background."

"I think a lot of the aspects of home schooling are the same as a Harvard education," Robbason said. "You get to direct your own education."