In this post, you’ll see what happens immediately after your teen passes their Modern States prep course. Modern States prep courses are the free online courses you take that award vouchers to take your CLEP exam for free! These vouchers are essential at helping you keep your college credit costs to a minimum.
Modern States
Not sure what Modern States is or how it helps you? Here’s a short video.
The Voucher
Modern States will pay for you to take the CLEP exam. After you complete the coursework and practice questions, request a CLEP voucher code from the Modern States website.
The Email
As soon as the Modern States system confirms successful completion, you will get an email from Modern States. If you don’t get an email within 5 business days, you’ll want to investigate.
College Board Account
Some of you may already have a College Board account. If your teen has taken a prior CLEP, Advanced Placement, PSAT, SAT, or other College Board brand test, be sure to log in with the SAME ACCOUNT. It is a nightmare trying to merge records, and parents have reported that this can delay their progress for months- so please don’t create a second account!
Pro tip: this account must be in your teen’s name, not the parent’s.
Parent Information
College Board does allow a parent to sign up as well. I recommend that you do this too.
Your Teen’s Email
Your teen has to confirm their email!! You should have them do this immediately so you can proceed with scheduling their exam. You won’t be able to schedule their exam without completing this step. Note that when you get through the buttons, there will be an opt-in/opt-out option. College Board DOES sell these email addresses and if you opt-in, you will be flooded with marketing from companies and businesses. I know people who create a special “college application only” email address to use specifically for these kinds of situations, but if you opt-out, you will NOT miss anything important or related to your CLEP exam(s).
You Can Now Register
Now that you have a College Board account, registration for each subsequent CLEP will be fast and painless. From here on out, you’ll log in (your teen will log in) to the College Board account each time you’re ready to register for a CLEP exam.
Choose a CLEP Exam
You have the option of registering for ANY CLEP at this point, but each exam costs $89 and the Modern States coupon will only work for the exam matching the class you passed. A few exams have similar sounding names, so if the code doesn’t work, go back and check that the exam title matches your voucher!
Testing Center Selection
CLEP exams can be taken at approved testing centers (Pearson Vue) or at home via remote proctoring. There are eligibility requirements to use remote proctoring, so if you don’t qualify, you’ll have to choose a testing center.
Remote Proctoring Eligibility:
- Be 13 years old or older.
- Be located in the U.S. (excludes U.S. territories) or be DANTES-funded.*
- Your computer and testing room must meet equipment and environment requirements as well as Proctortrack technical requirements for remote proctoring.
Proctortrack technical requirements: You must use the Windows operating system, version 10. Windows 11 is not supported. Macs, Chromebooks, tablets, and mobile devices are also prohibited.
Send Score Information? Yes or No?
The “send score information” option means that upon completion of the exam, the score will automatically be sent to a college selected by you. People suggest this option because it is cheaper, but it’s only saving you $20 for their entire degree. Here are 3 reasons I think you should NOT send scores.
- If your teen doesn’t have an account with the college, their scores will be discarded.
- If your teen does not pass, this is the ONLY TIME a failed score is sent to a college. If you send the score information later, failed scores are left off.*
- If you don’t do this every time, your teen won’t get credit for every exam.
My advice is to wait until your teen takes ALL their CLEP exams and pay one time to have their complete College Board transcript sent to their target college(s). At the time of this post, the cost to do that is $20 per complete transcript (not per exam!).
There is ONE EXCEPTION when sending scores (some or all) makes sense. That is if you need the score ASAP to meet a prerequisite or admissions eligibility. For instance, if your teen needs college credit in College Algebra so they can register for Precalculus, having their CLEP College Algebra score sent immediately will be faster than waiting for their full transcript to update and then send.
*I think this is very, very important because your teen can take a CLEP as many times as they want without the college ever knowing. The college will only see the passed score, and not failed attempts, if you wait to send the transcript.
ProctorTrack
If you intend to use remote proctoring, you have one more step! You have to create a ProctorTrack account. Like creating a College Board account, you only do this once, and with each subsequent exam you’ll bypass this step.
Pro tip: this account must be in your teen’s name, not the parent’s.
ID Verification
ID Verification is done when you create your account, but your teen will need to show an ID every time they take an exam.
You can read more about the remote proctoring process on CLEP’s website here.
Students without an ID: CLEP offers a form to fill out as an alternative (linked below). CLEP also says you can use that form instead of an ID with remote proctoring (and in a testing center), however, numerous parents have reported problems with this option. If you use remote proctoring with ProctorTrack *and* your teen is using the alternative form, please let me know how it went cookderosa@hs4cc.com
Click to access clep-student-id-form-2022.pdf
