College Board Clep
A clep test stands for College level examination program and can save you a tremendous amount of time and money from your college experience.
The College Board has put together 34 subjects that allow students to test out of, in order to test out of a certain subject, the student must show their ability and their standing of what would otherwise be taught over the entire semester by taking one test and successfully passing the test.
One of the great things about taking a class test is that they only cost $77, in addition to the $77 there is a testing center fee that will typically be around $20. Compare this to paying full price tuition for the class, attending class for the entire semester, submitting all homework assignments, and taking both midterm and final exams, which are traditionally longer and harder then one clep test.
I was personally able to take the number of clep tests, enough in fact, to shave an entire year off of my undergraduate college experience and save countless thousands of dollars. One of the best ways to determine which clep test you should be taking is to review the list of 34 available clep test and compare this to certain areas that you feel would be a natural stream or that you have previous knowledge and experience with. You should be able to find at least one or two that would be a fit.
Next, you should review the clep test difficulty list on this site, it will present tests that are known to be traditionally easier than other subjects. I have personally taken a number of these tests that I had no previous knowledge or experience with and using the official study guide and the practice tests that they give to was able to pass every single test I took.
Another aspect of clep testing that you should be aware of, is that they are not graded on a percentage. This means that it does not matter how well you do on the test. It means that as long as you pass you get full credit and no one will know how well or how bad you did on that particular test. Your transcript simply shows credit hours applied in the score is not calculated into your GPA, in fact it’s not even shown on your GPA or transcript.
Something that you need to be aware of if you are considering taking clep tests is that you should be working with your school counselor to determine which tests will help fulfill the credit hours that you need based on the degree plan that you should previously have outlined. I learned this the hard way after taking a clep test that did not fulfill one of my core classes, luckily, my counselor was able to apply those credit hours to the elective credit hours that I made so the test was not wasted. So make sure to work with them and get their approval before taking any tests.
Be sure to use the official clep test study guides as your main source of preparation for taking these tests. I found that there were a number of websites that try to prepare you for taking an actual clep test, and while there are a number of websites like this one for example, that help you to give you an overview of what you would expect and how you might prepare for the test, the official clep test study guide is your best resource. And I can say that personal experience.