San Francisco Bay Area Gifted Homeschoolers

By Jennifer Dees
August 20, 2025

Here’s a terrific new resource for homeschooled teens and their parents: Our friend Jaime Smith has written a college admissions book that can help you access and maximize college credit. Jaime is a BAGHS* alumna who homeschooled her own daughter; founded Online G3, which offers courses for gifted homeschoolers; and has since become an expert in college admissions counseling. Yet unlike most college admissions counselors who serve gifted students, Jaime includes and even specializes in transfer admissions. Her expertise in transfer admissions has become so sought after, she has now written her own book on the subject.

Jaime’s book, The Complete Guide to College Transfer: Find Your Ideal School, Maximize Your Credits, and Earn Your Degree, is very readable and enjoyable in addition to being a thorough reference guide. For one thing, Jaime includes many case histories that describe examples of students who took advantage of college transfer pathways. Here’s an excerpt from one that might sound familiar to our group:

“Grace had been homeschooled since kindergarten. Like many homeschoolers, she took classes at her local community college as part of her high school curriculum. [...] Although she began as a dual-enrolled student, receiving both high school and college credit for each class, Grace quickly realized that community college was a great fit for her and wanted to go full-time. Homeschooling gave her the flexibility to graduate from high school early and enroll as a regular student at Foothill Community College in California. As a high-achieving student, Grace was encouraged to apply for the Foothill Honors Institute and eventually earned an associate degree with the Honors Scholar distinction noted on her diploma.”

This profile could apply to various BAGHS students over the years, including Jaime’s own daughter, who transferred from Foothill College to a UC. It also applies to my daughter, except she decided to take her Foothill credits into a UC as dual-admission credits only, so she could start university as a first-year student and have the 4-year college experience. The two girls were on similar paths until they each decided how to use their credits for their own unique plans.

This example suggests why the book would be valuable to any homeschooling parents who are helping their teens build a high school transcript. College credits our students acquire as high school students may be part of their high school transcripts that help them gain freshman admission to a selective college or university, or those credits might ultimately be applied toward an associates’ degree and/or a transfer application. All parents of high school students who are dual-enrolled in homeschooling and community college (or taking university courses while homeschooling) will want to consider how credits will potentially be counted and/or transferred by a university. [See Jaime’s article, “To Transfer or Not to Transfer (Homeschool Edition)” on LinkedIn, one of her monthly columns in her “Beyond the Transcript” newsletter, for more on this topic.]

There are many practical aspects of building a transcript in this book. How to convert credits between quarter and semester hours, how to find out if your credits will be accepted or transfer to a specific university (the Transferology database), and all about alternative credit sources such as CLEP, AP, and others. Jaime discusses Transfer Admission Guarantees (TAGs) between community colleges and universities as well as California’s IGETC program for general education requirements. Her guidance will show you how to find the true graduation rate for transfer students (95% at UC Berkeley vs. 62% for University of North Texas, for example).

Besides offering such practical tips, how many college admissions books advise you to think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and self-actualization in choosing a college, a major, and a career? Jaime’s does. She writes that college is about much more than careers and money. “It can be a transformative experience where you explore new ideas, discover your passions, and then use your new-found knowledge and confidence to make your mark on society. That sounds a lot like self-actualization and transcendence, doesn’t it?” The whole book is conversational in tone, but the advice is from a sage consultant.

While her daughter was a homeschooler attending Foothill College as a high school student, and then full-time student, Jaime pursued certification in college admission counseling, with her daughter as her first client. In her training, she used a textbook called “Fundamentals of College Admission Counseling.” Ten years later, she wrote a chapter for that book, the official publication of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). She has now expanded that chapter on transfer admissions to her own full-length book.

Jaime’s book, The Complete Guide to College Transfer, is due for release on August 26, and is available for pre-order now at Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble (or ask your local bookstore to order it for you!). There is an ebook option as well, and an audio book read by Jaime will be available in September.

There will be a companion site to the book, along with free resources she offers, on Jaime’s website, TransferSavvy.com. That site is part of her overall consulting business, Beyond the Transcript. Her monthly newsletter on LinkedIn, also called Beyond the Transcript, covers “innovative approaches to education: online learning, homeschooling, college admissions, and college transfer.” In addition, Jaime leads a parent class/community for those planning to homeschool through high school and into college. Participating in her “Homeschool to College” community costs $29 per month and includes monthly Zoom sessions, a parent-to-parent discussion list, and more.

Jaime’s growing enterprise includes her first educational business, Online G3, which serves gifted homeschoolers with accelerated online courses. Online G3 has kept her close to the needs of the homeschooling community. She has expanded to offer college-credit courses from Arizona State University (ASU), so young gifted students can get guidance with their first college credit courses. This fall, Online G3 is offering English Composition II and Introduction to Marine Science. Jaime says she has found ASU a pleasure to work with, in an innovative program that benefits her students. See our article, “Early College Credits from ASU” for more about this program.

If you’re homeschooling your gifted teen, be sure to check out Jaime’s book, websites, and community.

— Jennifer Dees is Cofounder of San Francisco Bay Area Gifted Homeschoolers (BAGHS).