Complete Your Bachelor’s Degree in High School

How it works, what to do, and how to do it!

To put it candidly, the traditional education model is outdated, ineffective, and obsolete. Decades ago homeschoolers realized that they didn’t need to “do school” the way everyone said it needed to be completed. These pioneers broke the mold by taking over their children’s primary and secondary education. Now homeschooling families can claim their right to direct their sons’ and daughters’ bachelor’s degree as well.

Early Colleges: The World’s Way of Combining College and High School

Public school officials have been forced to come up with an answer to the typical high school’s inefficiency. Their solution is the “early college” high school—a training program that combines high school and college, giving students a jumpstart on their college studies. In fact, some attendees will have completed 25% of their bachelor’s degree by the time they graduate. Even in the early college setting, however, students usually need to fit into a pre-designed regime for combining college and high school.

 

CLEP Tests: The Best Option for Getting a Degree in High School

However, there is another option for high schoolers who excel in their studies, especially those who take advantage of the educational flexibility of homeschooling. The answer is a series of tests called the College Level Equivalency Program, or CLEP. CLEP exams have been designed by the College Board, the same company that created the SAT program. The CLEPs are higher learning’s best kept secret—graduate students have been using them for decades to bypass courses they are already proficient in. CLEP tests are individual exams that assess the overall knowledge a person has acquired in a particular subject like history, science, or math. But the best part of the CLEP exam is that each is worth college credit! Each CLEP test counts for between three and twelve credit hours and, has the potential to be accepted at over two thousand colleges and universities across the country (But watch out! See the disclaimer below).
The CLEP exams enable high school students to circumvent the redundancy of the beginning years of college even before they have graduated from high school. And they’ll gain college credit by doing it! Because there is no age limit for taking CLEP exams, even teens without a high school diploma are eligible to sit for the tests. Furthermore, when a student passes a CLEP exam, the results are stored in the College Board’s databank for twenty years and are easily retrievable when they need to be sent to a college or university.

 

Watch Out—the One Disclaimer to CLEP Exams

It’s imperative that test-takers check with the particular institution that the CLEP results will be sent to before taking the exam because each university has its own rules on how CLEPs are accepted. Although CLEP tests are worth college credit, some universities only accept certain CLEP exams in place of regular coursework. Really, it is not in the best financial interest of the typical “brick and mortar” university for potential students to transfer CLEP credits into their degree track. After all, colleges make their money through course fees and tuition—the more time that students spend on the university campus, the more money can be made at their expense.
Yet because of the outcry for more feasible college-level training, a new breed of accredited colleges and universities are cropping up throughout the country that accept all CLEP exams as long as they fit into the student’s degree track. For example, Thomas Edison State College, Excelsior College, and Charter Oak State College are all accredited institutions that will accept any CLEP that fits into a particular degree track. In fact, many high school-aged students have enrolled in these colleges without even having a high school degree.

 

Here’s How It Works

When high schoolers amass a good amount of college credits through CLEP exams, many colleges assume that anyone capable of passing multiple CLEP exams is also capable of doing college-level coursework. Therefore, such postsecondary institutations have admitted high schoolers based on the large quantity of CLEP exams they have passed. In many cases, SAT It is equally unimportant that students take the SAT because if they have already accrued college credit, their SAT scores are irrelevant to a university’s admissions department.

 

Where to Take a CLEP

You might be asking, “So where can CLEP tests be taken?” You can find the answer at the College Board website. On that page, just select the state you live in or near from the drop down menu and click “submit.” The next page that opens will have a list of test centers where anyone can sit for a CLEP. These testing sites are usually at the testing services office of a local college. Even if you don’t live close to a testing center, it may be worth the drive because obtaining college credits through CLEP is considerably less expensive than the per hour credit fee at a brick and mortar university.
The way young people are completing college today is more cost effective and time efficient than it has been in decades. Don’t settle for the outdated education model at a typical university—take some CLEPs and speed up the process to fulfilling your postsecondary education goals!