Get the credit you deserve through testing

One of our participating colleges coined the slogan that says, "It doesn't matter how you learned what you learned that counts; What really matters is that you learned what you learned that counts." Many adult learners have challenged college level examinations to get college credit for what they have learned through life experience, while others have chosen to study the subjects prior to taking the tests. Regardless of the way students acquire the knowledge, college credit by examination can be an excellent way to accelerate their progress to degree completion, while saving a substantial amount of time and money along the way.

There are several types of examinations, including Advanced Placement (AP) tests that many top performing high school students take to get credit for the college-level knowledge they gained in school. For adult learners in the workforce, there are three main sources of examinations which are reviewed by the American Council on Education to ensure correlation to the content of college courses and are recommended for the relevant credit. These include:

• College Level Examination Program (CLEP). These examinations are written by the College Board and are always recommended for lower level college credit. They cover a wide array of liberal arts and business subjects and are typically worth 3 semester hours, although some are rated at 6 semester hours and, depending on the score that students make, language examinations may be worth 12 semester hours.


• DSST Subject Tests. Although these were originally created by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton under a contract to serve the military as Defense Subject Standardized Tests, but the DOD released these to the general public a few years ago. As such, now anyone can challenge these examinations for college credit. Most of these are worth 3 semester hours, with some even rendering upper level credit. These cover a wide array of subjects for students to consider.


• Excelsior College Examination Program (ECE). These institutional examinations are created by Excelsior College in New York and cover a wide array of subjects, many of which offer upper level credit. These were originally administered by American College Testing as the Proficiency Examination Program (ACT-PEP) on request by Excelsior College, then serving under the name Regents College.

Students can save a considerable amount of money earning college credit by examination, as the cost of the tests is far less than that of tuition at most colleges. Most of these exams cost between $74 and $82, with some costing around $240 (subject to change). There are more than 138 examinations from which to choose from these sources. In addition, many colleges offer their own institutional examinations, such as Thomas Edison State College, Ohio University, and others. If you have passed college level examinations in the past, we can help you apply the credit toward thousands of degrees from accredited colleges and universities across the nation.

These examinations are offered at national test centers, which include local college campuses, Sylvan Learning Centers, and Prometric Learning Centers. Our student support website links students to locators where they can find the nearest test center to take their exams.

Tuition-Free Courses Can Help You Prepare

Get the knowledge you need to succeed in challenging these exams

There are more than 11,713 courses that have been posted on the web by excellent colleges and universities for the world to benefit. We have spent years building our advanced student support website in which we link hundreds of these tuition-free courses to help students get the knowledge they need to pass these examinations. We also link students to free practice tests so they can see if they are ready to take the real examination before going to their local test center to take the exams.

Want to find out more about the tuition-free courses to which we link our students to prepare for national examinations? Since more that a hundred of these are Hollywood-style video courses digitally streamed on the web, we thought the image below would be an appropriate link to the page on this site that will tell you more. Click the image below: