CLEP Exams

@techmom99 Every school is different in how many hours a student can exempt with credit by exam or transfer in from community college. There is no hard and fast 30 hours. My S’ school allows far more than 30. Once your S narrows down his list of schools, look into their specific policies because they do vary a lot.

I wonder how many years of high school Spanish one needs to pass the CLEP?

Any thoughts?

The Spanish CLEP looks fairly basic, but I’d recommend taking a practice test to be sure. The questions seem on the level of:

Como esta la Señora Rodriguez?
a. Tengo mucho hambre
b. Ella esta bien
c. Necesito ir al restaurante
d. Hace frio

There is a listening section though, so you’d have to be comfortable with hearing moderately rapid conversation and needing to choose an answer quickly. The test has a very high pass rate.

I looked at the Spanish exam several years ago, so it may have changed. At that time it was tougher than the SAT II, and easier than the AP language exam. If you pick up the CLEP review book, an SAT II review book, and an AP review book at the public library, you should be able to put together a decent practice exam.

Just remember that the CLEP is administered on a computer, so some students can be initially disoriented by the testing situation. It might be useful for your kid to try any mock online exam just to get a notion of what the experience could be like.

@gettingschooled -

The son I was referring to is a current SUNY student. He was only allowed to use 30. S17 will be lucky to have 9 or 10 AP credits so even if he CLEPs a few, it’s unlikely to be an issue.

I have heard that a lot of the more prestigious schools don’t take CLEP or AP or place limits on them but that’s not the level of school S17 is looking at.

Hello I was able to CLEP out of 4 classes in my undergraduate studies. Intro to Psych, Intro to Business Law, College Algebra, and Western Civilizations I. taking the CLEP exams saved me about $6000 and cut a semester full time out of my degree. I was able to share the CLEP Study materials with my girlfriend and she CLEPPED out of 3 classes. I purchased all the study guides from Prime, they included free Audio guides also. All 20 Study Guides including the Audio were only $75.[Here](http://clixtrac.com/goto/?237705)they are if anyone is interested.

More great info - thanks everyone. So worth doing and I’m so glad it’s still around.

CLEP stands for College Level Examination Program, btw.

Just to echo to check school policies on a CLEP test. I took a CLEP test at a state directional in order to get an English pre-requisite out of the way, and if I was staying there, would have taken more; my current ‘elite’ private university does not count CLEP credit at all.

@rebeccar, which CLEPs did you take and what study materials did you use? For those of you who took Western Civ, which section did you take or did you take both? How many hours should you allow to study for each one? My son has registration for fall college courses this spring so he needs to study for, take, and pass some courses before he registers. He will take Economics next semester in high school so he was thinking about taking the Micro and Macro economics CLEPs. His athletic academic advisor suggested Western Civ and Composition.It’s been 1 1/2 since he took World History so it will be almost like starting over. Did any of you take the composition CLEP? If so was it the one with or without essay? Was it hard? Was it like studying for Writing on SAT? My son wants to double major plus be an athlete so any courses he can get out of the way would be great. He is only taking one AP-Calc AB but his college has special math courses for Business majors so if he passes AP Calc, it would only be elective credit.

For those of you who took Science CLEPs, did you still have to take college labs?

My son took the Biology Clep and passed. However he knows he will need two gen ed sciences in college, one of which requires a lab component. So he’s planning to take AP Chemistry to fulfill that.

@kdbugalpha I took:
College Composition
Marketing
Humanities
American Literature
US History I
Social Sciences and History
Sociology
Educational Psychology
Management
Analyzing and Interpreting Lit

I also took three DSSTs (essentially same thing as CLEP) for Intro Business, Law Enforcement, and Counseling. I spent about a week maximum studying for each of them; a lot of it is common sense and not so easy to study for. I didn’t want to buy study guides because I was taking so many, so I used free-clep-prep.com and I can’t recommend it enough. If you want something more concrete (I personally wasn’t so stressed about them) the website Instacert is supposed to be excellent and has a pass guarantee. It’s $20 for a month and you get access to all their study materials. Mostly flashcards.

The composition CLEP is similar to the writing section of the SAT. The questions were like “which order should these sentences go in” or “what most closely expresses the meaning of this paragraph.” A bunch of "rephrase this sentence in the best possible way. "There were also a few questions on MLA format and citations. The essay was really pretty easy. I think my prompt was something like “does true education occur inside or outside the classroom” or and they’re just looking for an organized, logical response using your own experiences or outside connections. Then there’s a second one where they give you two short texts and you have to choose a side to argue (mine was about fossil fuels / renewable energy).

Each college may handle CLEP differently, so check each college’s policy on what credit units and/or subject credit it may give for CLEP exam scores.

@purpleacorn -

When you transferred to the elite U, did your CLEP credits transfer with you even though the school wouldn’t have taken them initially?

@kdbugalpha -

My experience goes back 40 years, but I did not have to take any science or math classes based on my CLEP scores. I assume each school will differ, however.

I think CLEP has been overshadowed by AP in the last 20 years or so. I wish I’d insisted my S1 take the test for Spanish. He took three years of Spanish in HS and it might have saved him from the GPA-killing German he insisted on taking!

Since College Board has both AP and CLEP, I’m wondering why they’ve kept CLEP so quiet. They must get more money for AP courses…?

^^I think the initial intent of CLEP was to give credit to people for knowledge they had picked up somehow in a format different from traditional school - i.e., military service, etc. ?? I’m not sure though. They probably do prefer to push AP since that is a much broader slice of the education population (more $$).

My big regret is not pushing CLEP harder with my UF son when he was in high school as a homeschooler. The other universities he considered going to - he could CLEP throughout college I think. UF cuts it off after December of your freshman year. He squeaked out one CLEP test this past summer. I pushed him to do it and he wasn’t too happy with me for a little while but now he is thankful and wishes we had done more.

One caveat from our experience is that UF would not give him a “words” credit for American History I, even though he passed CLEP and got the credit. You have to have 24,000 words to graduate, and different classes award different levels of “words.” American History would have been one of those classes. I can understand why they don’t give words, though, because he didn’t have to do any writing for the CLEP test. So he will have to pick up words in other classes (had some from the English Comps).

@techmom99- No. They were comp credits, which were useless in the english lit framework at the university.