Having worked on college campuses for years in a Res Life capacity - I think the author's experience is very typical of first-generation college students (which she was). Most first-generation college students lack much information about how college works or how to choose a college, major, etc. There is a reason that first-generation college students have a higher drop-out rate than students whose parents attended college. The last university I worked with had a program that directly targeted first-generation college students and paired them with mentors to help them learn how to negotiate all the hurdles of college. It is a learned system. The fact that she was homeschooled compounded her problem only in that the professor who had an issue with homeschooling chose to attack her on that (not unlike a professor choosing to single out a student for something else - ie, a nontraditional student, or a woman in engineering classes, both 'types' of students that I saw deal with bigoted professors that necessitated Dean involvement in resolving).
My mother has a college degree, my older sister was attending college, and I still had fantasies about college being filled with other students who, like me, were excited about learning. I envisioned sitting around the cafeteria eating dinner and discussing something interesting from a philosophy course with my fellow students. I think that vision of college is what most of us 'nerds' looked forward to while we were growing up. The glossy brochures from colleges and universities don't disabuse us of that fantasy, either - think of all the photos of students studying on grassy lawns, or walking together with books in their arms, or sitting in a library nook/windowseat reading. Also, my mother (and my high school guidance counselor) were *awful* at helping direct me to schools with good financial aid packages for me. I found out later that my test scores and grades should have given me near-full-rides if not full rides at many schools; I didn't know that, and ended up spending more money than I should have at the university I attended, because I didn't know that I needed to advocate for myself until later.
It is very true, though, that students can find schools which fit their needs not only financially but also academically, class-size, area of study, etc. There are colleges like Evergreen or Reed which would fit an unschooled student very well (Reed is pass/fail, no letter grades; both do many cross-subject collaboration and long-term projects). It's really important for students to visit the campus, speak with students who attend there, see what the res hall facilities are like, see what a typical class size is like, attend a few classes.
I would hope that parents do a better job of helping students research schools which fit their price range, their academic and social interests today -- but honestly, having worked with a college prep program for low-income students within the past few years, most of those students were choosing schools based solely on affordability with little or no idea how marketable that school and that degree would be. That reflects their income levels, yes (although these students were all of a caliber that they were getting good scholarships), but it also reflects a lack of knowledge about what college is like, and how to find a good fit.
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