Meeting with your counselor

It is very important that one of the first things that you do is meet with your counselor to find out what credit areas you need, what types of credit they will accept, if you are eligible to take a DSST or CLEP test and the college or university's policy. Do your homework before the meeting to find out what tests you are interested in taking. Browse through the list, if there is a topic on there that interests you or you think to yourself "this looks easy" find out more about it. If you already have experience in a test subject, it will make the studying that much easier. However, there are a few things to consider.

Some schools only allow you to test out of a certain amount of credits. At a local university, it may only be as much as 15 credit hours. At University of Phoenix it is 30 credit hours. Some colleges do not place a limit on the amount of credit you can receive by examination.

Some schools require a specific class title, not just credit in a certain area. Your school may require Algebra 1010. If that is the case, they will generally assign a list of classes to CLEP and DANTES tests. The following is just an example of how it may look:

There are several reasons to pay attention to their chart if they award credit this way. You may or may not need the class that the CLEP or DSST test counts as for graduation. You may be able to use the test for elective or interdisciplinary credit. If you have taken the exact class before you may not be eligible to take the test for credit.

Once you have the information from your school's academic advisor or website and have verified it to be current, decide which test you wish to take.

KEEP THIS IN MIND, some schools or counselors will not want you to test out. They will discourage it and you. They will tell you how hard it is to pass. This is for two reasons. The first, when you test out, the college is losing your tuition money and while they have an official policy accepting non-traditional credit, they may have an unofficial policy of discouraging students. The second reason is that some educators do not believe that testing out benefits you as a student. We at www.passyourclass.com however do. If you know the information then there is no reason to sit in a class and learn it again. Take your extra time and money and spend it on something like your family or a vacation. You'll still have plenty of classes to take on campus to graduate.