Kate Cayley got into a Halifax university on the strength of an essay explaining her love for a 495-line poem. David Piechnik was accepted into art school in Vancouver after submitting a portfolio that included posters he designed for his church.

The duo is among the nation’s growing number of home schoolers who have knocked on the doors of post-secondary institutions to convince them that kitchen-table classrooms are prime training grounds for higher education.

And the institutions are listening. Many schools that wouldn’t look twice at home-schooled applicants a decade ago are now crafting policies to accommodate them, ranging from the rigid to the welcoming. "I never really assumed I wouldn’t get in," said Piechnik, a 22-year-old from Surrey who entered a formal classroom for the first time last year when he enrolled at the Art Institute of Vancouver. "But, I didn’t have transcripts, so I had to go meet with them."

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