(First, I want to thank everyone on this message board for helping me to obtain my college degree. As soon, I received my diploma I was able to get a great job making more money then when I did not have a degree. ) Recently, I decide to pick up a second degree and applied at numerous local universities. Not to long ago I received a letter from my second school of choice and it explained to me that I had been accepted but with a GPA of 1.999 I was like what the @#$$# my GPA from Excelsior when I graduated was very high. So, upon learning this I called the school to demand to know why my GPA had been lowered, there response was “We don’t expect Dantes and certain CLEP exams” Okay, I understand some schools don’t expect certain exams as credit and that is why I called the school before I even applied and they told me they did expect CLEP. However, I soon learned they only expect certain CLEP exams. I am sure everyone is asking themselves what is the point of this post? Well, I know a lot of us who have finished our degrees through distance learning have taken these types of exams and they have made up huge portion of our college credits. I disliked learning that my hard work in passing those CLEP and Dantes exams were worth nothing to this school. I thank the lord that I did take many regular courses via internet to pad my degree and not just took bunch of exit exams. I’m not saying no one should take CLEP or Dantes when wanting to complete your degree, but be aware that a huge number of colleges will only take one or two of these exams as credit. So, if your looking at a particular college and have large number of credited exams make sure you find out which exams the school will expect. Believe me it will save you money on the admission fees. (If I have any grammar errors sorry)
Question: Were you trying to get a second *bachelors* degree? If that happens to be the case, then your experience is to have been expected. Usually, colleges will severely restrict the number of CLEP/DANTES tests they'll accept for additional undergraduate work. This is basically a way for them to get more money out of you...although we here know that you've already gained sufficient mastery of the undergraduate courses, they can get more money out of you if they require you to take more of *their* courses again. Oddly enough, that all doesn't seem to matter once going for a postgraduate degree. They only care that one HAS the degree,not what all it consisted of. Good lucck to you.
True I was trying to obtain a second degree and feel the same as you that they wanted me to take extra classes. I of course refused and will be seeking my Masters in Psychology now and no longer a second degree.
Re: True Part of the trouble is that all CLEP exams and most DANTES exams give lower-level credit only. If you already have a degree then your general education requirements are probably already met for a 2nd degree. What you'd need are upper-level credits for the second degree (with maybe a few lower-level), meaning courses, Excelsior exams or other options. Did you look into the Psychology GRE? With Excelsior you can probably get a 2nd degree from them by taking 2 exams: scoring in the 80th+ percentile on the GRE (yielding 30 credits) and taking one Excelsior College Exam (Research Methods). Cheers, Mark
