In Ohio, students have the option of attending college for free in what is called Post secondary enrollment. I would say most if not all of the high schoolers in our group are attending college that way, either as part of an Ohio Charter School, or by joining an O8 school. And I also freely admit that when I heard about post secondary about ten years ago, I was interested in it too.
But the state of Ohio has cracked down on who can be an O8 school, and unless you belong to a charter school, regular “homeschoolers” don’t have much of a chance of doing post secondary. And for Sam and I that has turned out to be a blessing.
One day last year, I discovered CLEP tests. I guess they’ve been around a while, but they certainly aren’t very popular in my neck of the woods among homeschoolers. And most of the public school and private school kids I know about take AP classes for college credit.
CLEP stands for College Level Examination Program. It is a legitimate way of getting college credit; it even has its own page on the College Board Site. The idea is, that if you are already well versed in a certain subject, you can take the CLEP test in that subject and if you pass, you get college credit. If your college accepts the CLEP test results, you just saved yourself a lot of time and money.
CLEP tests are affordable at about $70 per test. Each test is worth 3 to 6 college credits. There are testing sites all over the country. Turns out, the college in town is a CLEP testing center!
There are drawbacks. Not every college accepts CLEP credit, so it’s probably best to check with the institution that the student wants to attend first.
But Sam and I aren’t doing it soley for the college credit. Having CLEP scores that I can put on his homeschool transcript give more authority and clout to his transcript. If I use CLEP as a sort of final exam, it is an accepted sign to the academic world that Sam mastered the material.
Now, I did also look into AP classes. I took AP in high school and loved it! But I came upon a blog (and I couldn’t find it again – drat) where the young blog writer really thought CLEP was better than AP. His reasoning was that with CLEP you get the same credit but with a lot less hassle. In other words, several weeks of intense self-study compared to an entire semester’s worth of work in an AP class.
It is true however, that some places think the AP classes are more valuable and will accept them over CLEP. If my students were interested in entering an elite school, I guess I’d have to look into it, but so far the colleges we have checked out accept CLEP. And in the end our goal is for our students to get a high school degree, while incurring as little debt as possible!
So far Sam is putting all of his attention in getting ready for the CLEP test in American History to 1877. Hopefully he will take that in January. After he takes that test, we will be studying high school biology with the goal of taking the CLEP test in that around June or July. In the meantime he is also studying American Literature and American Government, hoping to take those either in the spring or summer as well. If this works out well, Sam could have 12 college credits before he is a high school junior. That’s S A W E E T! as they say.
Here are some of my CLEP links.
Instacert
on Del.icio.us
CLEPfohomeschool Yahoo Group
Please browse my eBay items!
Visit my new Amazon Store!
