COLLEGES TYPICALLY LIST CLEP POLICIES
Colleges have policies regarding CLEP credits on their websites. The policies describe the accepted exams, the accepted scores, and how many credits they will grant for the exams. Sometimes colleges have requirements for how certain credits can be used at their school.
SCORES REQUIRED FOR CREDIT
The College Board sets 50 as a passing score. Some colleges require higher scores than what the College Board recommends. I have seen some schools require scores in the higher 50’s instead of 50. I have also seen schools grant more credits than the recommended for higher scores. My daughter was granted 8 credits for biology instead of 6 for a score of 58.
NUMBER OF CREDITS GRANTED
Some schools discount the number of credits they will grant from what the College Board recommends. If your target school does a lot of discounting, you will need to weigh out the other benefits of CLEP testing. Will they help your student get accepted, win merit scholarships, be a better student, and be a more confident homeschooler?
THE “UNLOCKING” POLICY
This is what I call a requirement that my daughter encountered at her college. In order to use the credits from her Western Civilization I CLEP exam, she had to take a course in the history department. In other words, the CLEP credit was “unlocked” only after a history course was taken. Not such a bad deal. By taking one three-credit college course, she received six history credits. This policy seemed to affect that CLEP and not the others. In my research of other colleges, I did not come across this policy very often.
This policy may not be too difficult to deal with at a liberal arts college because freshmen and sophomores have to take courses in a variety of areas in order to fulfill the general education requirements. By doing so, it would not be hard to unlock credits if that happened to be the school’s policy.
Comprehensive Articulation Agreement (CAA)
North Carolina has an agreement between the community colleges and the state four-year schools that allows students who earn an associate degree in the state to transfer these credits to the four-year school. All the general education requirements will be waived, and the student will enter as a junior. According to the CAA document, credits from AP, CLEP, Dantes, IB, and Cambridge exams will be accepted. This essentially means that the receiving four-year school must accept credits by exam even if they normally do not. The state school my daughter applied to abided by the CAA. It accepted all her CLEP exams and waived her out of certain requirements. Read my post CLEP and NC’s Comprehensive Articulation Agreement.
IN SUMMARY
The policies I’ve mentioned here are simply the ones I came across in my journey. Most likely there are other policies. Schools can do what they want in regard to how they handle transfer credits like CLEP credits. Policies vary widely from school to school. If you have a target school, review the policies before choosing CLEP exams. If you don’t know which school your child will attend, have faith that the hard work your student puts into passing a CLEP exam will pay off in more ways than just credits.
My experience with CLEPs. I have coached my kids and their friends through 16 different CLEP exams over a period of 9 years. Collectively, they have passed 39 CLEP exams and earned over 159 college credits. I’m still coaching my younger son through his CLEP journey. My high school graduates have received full-ride merit scholarships.
Musing: a period of reflection or thought. As such this post reflects my thoughts, opinions, and experiences on the topic. The choice to home school and the methods you choose are yours to determine.