momonthemove wrote:Hello all. I have a couple questions about CLEP. My oldest is a 7th grader and we will start ECC this year with him and his younger brother. Sister will be starting Kindergarten. We are switching to MFW because I was really impressed with their high school curriculum and then really got excited about the rest too! LOL
I tend to look ahead and research ahead so that I am not scrambling to select curriculum, etc. I have seen and read multiple posts about CLEP on this forum and on other forums. My questions are truly non-judgemental and I hope you will read them as such. I just want a bigger picture to help me to think about this as we near high school.
1) What is the basis for doing CLEP? Is it primarily financial (ie. college credits for less $ than per credit hour costs?)
2) Which academic areas do you usually CLEP in? And, is there a site that shows more about this?
3) IF you have CLEP'd, and your child has earned multiple credits to put them at higher level college classes for their freshman year, have you found their maturity matches these classes? Their study habits?
4) Do you see a benefit in not CLEPing and just having your children experience traditional college entry level courses as a freshman? Maybe they would take a few community college classes their senior year, but mainly have entry level classes as a freshman.
5) Do you envision that your children will live at home and go to college, or will they most likely go away for college? And, if they are going away, is there a bias towards CLEP or non-CLEP?
I appreciate your willingness to respond.
Deb
Interesting conversation. I'll join in
#1 (a) I think a BIG reason for CLEP is the cost, as you mentioned. College costs SO much more than when I was in school.
(b) However, I think sometimes students do CLEP just to stand out from the crowd of applicants. Anything your student can do to stand out, will be helpful.
(c) And in homeschool circles, I think CLEP is big just because our students are an unknown quantity and an outside eval is helpful, such as dual enrollment or CLEP testing.
(d) CLEP can be used by you as the teacher for other purposes, similar to standardized testing, such as evaluating your student's needs, raising the bar for your student, showing your student what will be expected of him (
), etc.
#2 Another factor might be what your particular college accepts in terms of CLEP. Sometimes they don't allow credits in your own major. Sometimes they don't allow anything at all. Here's where you can look that up.
http://www.cleptestreview.com/clep-college-search/
#4 You can do both CLEP and just start with your freshman class, so you have options, and I like options
I think some of that depends on the kind of program you're in.
(a) I have a son who went to a smaller college and wanted to enter with his class. So, even though he could have went higher into calculus, he decided to start over with his class (he'd had calculus at his high school and at the community college). He knew what he wanted to do and he did it in 4 years and he enjoyed being part of a class.
(b) I have nieces who went to more general universities (and even some of my son's classmates in his smaller engineering college) didn't really know exactly what they wanted to do. Most spent at least 5 years in school and some didn't even graduate at that point. Even those from very poor families have big-time debt now. CLEP might have helped them save some money, move faster, weed some things out earlier, etc.
Just some random thoughts,
Julie
I mean, who knows what the Lord really has in store for her after high school...but why not get the biggest jump on college that we can, right? Especially if it saves lots of $$$.