One day last spring, my oldest daughter told me that she needed a copy of her high school transcript as soon as possible. She was a sophomore, and I had been meaning to start working on a transcript. After hours of Google searches and a few late nights on the computer, I cobbled together a transcript worthy of submitting with her application to a summer academic honors program she wanted to attend. I still worried that it wasn’t good enough for her to use for college admissions purposes.

If I had read 7 EASY Steps To Writing a High School Transcript ($11.95), by Jenni Stahlman and Jodi Hagaman, my job would have been a lot easier. 7 EASY Steps is a 46 page ebook giving easy-to-follow advice for creating a complete high school portfolio suitable for any homeschool graduate to use in the college admissions process.

The first section of the ebook deals with high school graduation requirements. Instead of listing the requirements for each state, though, the authors compiled a list of links for each state on their website. I was easily able to find the requirements for the state we are currently living in and for a few states where we may move in the next few years. This section of the book includes several pages of worksheets to track your student’s progress towards meeting the graduation requirements in your state.

The next two sections of the book define common transcript terms such as “credit” and “GPA.” The book gives some insight into what amount of work constitutes a high school credit (with the reminder that this definition may vary slightly from state to state). It then gives clear explanations of the different types of GPAs that might appear on a transcript. It even has examples of how to calculate yearly, cumulative, and weighted GPAs.

The part I found most valuable is the simple transcript format shown in the fourth section of the ebook. Their instructions told me exactly which information I need to put on a transcript and showed me one way of organizing that information. The resulting transcript is complete, easily read, and suitable for use in any situation. By following their example, I could easily create a transcript in a single evening.

Since the title of the book is 7 EASY Steps To Writing a High School Transcript, I assumed that all I would learn to do was to write the transcript. The authors went several steps farther. The last three sections of the book cover other materials that a high school student might want to include when making a complete high school portfolio to present to colleges. This other information might include course descriptions, grading rubrics, a high school resume, letters of recommendation, or other materials that showcase the student’s strengths. The book shows how to format the information and how to organize it for easy reference by a college admissions officer.

7 EASY Steps To Writing a High School Transcript takes the somewhat daunting task of creating a high school transcript and makes it a lot less scary. In fact, after reading this ebook, I wondered why I had made it so complicated in the first place.

-Product review by Cristi Schwamb, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, October, 2015