Homeschooling for College Credit
Your guide to resourceful high school planning
You’ll read about teens finishing 1, 2, 3, or even 4 years of college in high school, but how does everyone go so fast? The traditional college student takes 6 years to earn a degree, so what’s going on? Continue reading “How does everyone go so FAST?”
Since CLEP credit is recorded on your college transcript as pass/fail, what does that mean for your GPA? Well, that can be good *or* bad depending on your other scores.
Continue reading “CLEP and GPA”
Kicking off the new year with CLEP or DSST exam plans? There are a zillion ways to prep for a CLEP exam – so let me lead with this: It is my opinion that “CLEP Prep” is easiest AFTER your student finishes a homeschool class (not instead of). Just as you wouldn’t expect an SAT test prep book to teach your son algebra, my opinion is that a CLEP prep product isn’t designed to teach a subject “from scratch” either.
The following links are NOT affiliate links or sponsored content.
Modern States – take a CLEP for FREE! These free online courses will award you a voucher that pays for your CLEP test. It really is free in every way – free class, free CLEP, free proctoring fee. Many parents report that they use this program for the specific purpose of getting the voucher. This is not a curriculum, it’s more like interactive Cliffs Notes. This product is the ONLY product that is free to prep AND free to test.
Free CLEP Prep Site Excellent tool. Developed by a DSST & CLEP-tester (Justin) he’s written some very good testing outlines and practice tests. Use this as one “part” of your CLEP prep program.
Crash Course Totally free video-based mini-courses that teach you the minimum you have to know in a subject. Perfect for visual learners but fast-paced. I suggest taking notes and using this AFTER a regular high school curriculum to target specific things you’ll need to know for the test. Use this as one “part” of your CLEP program.
Tripod CLEP Prep Lesson Plans A wonderful online site put together by a Christian homeschooler (Tricia Q) and free to use. (Note: There are some links to videos or lectures that are not written by Tripod that are not Christian- this is warned on the site.) The plans are free to use but require additional books for purchase to use the program fully. They also have a large yahoo group.
Credits Before College offers 3 Christian CLEP /DSST prep workbooks that contain everything you need for curriculum and test prep for those 3 subjects: DSST Environmental Science, DSST World Religions, and CLEP Psychology. These books are written by Christian homeschooler (Cheri F) and are physical paper books (not digital). The curriculum is designed to give high school credit in addition to test prep.
Dual Credit at Home is a package of 9 CLEP and 4 DSST prep lessons. These lessons are written by a Christian homeschooler (Becky M). The program costs about $1000 and is not all-inclusive. In addition to the program fee, it requires a monthly subscription to InstantCert flashcards ($20/month), a monthly subscription to Speedyprep ($30/month). Feedback from parents about the quality of the content is excellent, but since you can only buy the program as a “package” my advice is to double-check that your teen’s college accepts all 9 CLEP exams and all 4 DSST exams before you decide.
REA Guides are paperback and online prep guides for CLEP and AP. These guides include excellent and thorough practice tests that also have summaries of “why” each test question’s answer is correct. This brand of test prep is considered the golden standard by anyone who has taken multiple exams. I (Jennifer) used an REA guide for every exam I’ve taken, and think they are far superior to any other brand on the market. An additional point is that REA updates its guides along with CLEP exam updates. I am unable to confirm or deny that other companies are updating their content to match new versions of exams, but I know or sure that REA does. REA Guides are often available in your public library or online used in our HS4CC marketplace.
Have a favorite CLEP or DSST prep resource? Share it below!
TLC Literature Videos (CLEP Prep)
This is a great list of 7 free or inexpensive curriculum options for your teen to learn to code. As always, you’ll award high school credit for their homeschool work. Separately, they can earn college credit if they take the AP Computer Science Exam. (info follows) Since you can’t call your homeschool curriculum “AP” without approval, it’s ok to just list the courses they take on their high school transcript. You can even designate it as “honors” to indicate a rigorous program. Continue reading “Learn to Code: Get College Credit”
Some great news from ACE, it looks like we will no longer have to pay $20 for our transcripts! They’ve announced this change with the following press release:
Thank you ACE for helping us keep college affordable!
At some point in your teen’s math sequence, you’ll cross over into math topics that are also part of a typical college math sequence. This transition begins just after Algebra 1, and if parents are aware of this shift, it can result in significant amounts of college credit! Continue reading “Math in Your Homeschool: CLEP”
This is a quick announcement to say that I accidentally deleted the video How to Create an ACE Account for your Teen. This happened when I deleted an old Youtube Account that I thought was empty – it wasn’t, that video was hosted there. Thank you for your patience, I’ll record a new one very soon.
Are you trying to decide between CLEP or dual enrollment? It’s a huge decision and highly stressful for most parents. It all comes down to 3 basic questions. Continue reading “Push the Button!”
CLEP can be a fantastic addition to any homeschool program. For students that want to earn a lot of inexpensive college credit in high school, CLEP edges out dual enrollment and Advanced Placement. In order to successfully plan multiple CLEP exams into your student’s homeschool program, you’ll need to understand the depth of knowledge needed to be successful. Through my homeschooling journey, I’ve found that CLEP exams tend to represent one of two exam types: Continue reading “Homeschool Subjects & CLEP”
Parents of teens earning college credit often wonder where the credit is “kept” or stored until they need it. This is a great question because when your student is ready, we want to make sure you can quickly and easily access everything they’ve worked so hard to earn! Continue reading “Where is College Credit Kept?”
