Has anyone taken these General Education exams and used them at Excelsior? I've got their printed Clep materials but it doesn't mention these exams. I spoke to an advisor and she unconvincingly told me they should transfer ok. I'm looking to test-out of 90%-100% of undergrade (BA/BS Business Management) requirements. I'm still evaluating which school can facilitate this.
If you haven't already, go ahead and sign up at the Excelsior website. You don't have to enroll in order to use most of the site or download materials. You just have to register with the site and that is free. Download the PDF file, "A Student Guide to Credit by Examination at Excelsior College". It lists exactly what exams are Pass/Fail and which ones are graded. It also provides the scores necessary to achieve the grade. The guide provides information on CLEP, DANTES and Excelsior's ECE exams. For a BS in General Business Degree, you will need achieve the following: 60 credits in Arts and Sciences which includes: Written English Requirement - 3 Credits (CLEP exam will NOT meet this requirement) Humanities Requirement - 9 credits in addition to written English. Social Sciences and History - Macroeconomics, Microeconomics and 9 more credits. Natural Sciences and Mathematics - One math course/test at precalculus or above and one statistics course/test. Remaining Arts and Sciences can be from any of the sections. Business Component - 45 Credit hours Organizational Behavior - 3 Credits Ethics - 3 Credits Financial Accounting - 3 Credits Managerial Accounting - 3 Credits Introduction to Business Law - 3 Credits Computers - 3 Credits Principles of Management - 3 Credits Principles of Marketing - 3 Credits Financial Management - 3 Credits Production/Operations Management - 3 Credits Business Policy - 3 Credits Additional 12 credit hours of upper level credit (Courses part of business component don't count towards upper level requirement) Additional Credit component Information Literacy Requirement - 1 Credit hour Any college level study in Arts and Sciences or Business areas - 14 credits. Physical education doesn't count. Also, download the "School of Business and Technology" catalog. In that you will find the degree outline I just presented and you should find a list of CLEP and DANTES tests that meet certain course requirements. For example, the CLEP "Principles of Accounting" test covers both the Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting requirements for a total of 6 credits. Basically, at this time, you can test out of the entire degree except for the "Production/Operations Management" and the "Business Policy" courses. I believe that Excelsior has retired those two exams and there isn't a CLEP or DANTES test that covers them. There may be a TESC or OU tests that cover those courses, but I don't know. Anyway, I've found TESC tests to be so expensive, that I just took the class at LSU anyway. BTW, the "Introduction to Operations Management" at LSU meets the Production/Operations Management core requirement for $229 plus books. Also, the "Business Policy" course from Adams State College meets the Business Policy requirement for $315 plus books. PS. TESC = Thomas Edison State College and OU = Ohio University. Both schools have credit by examination programs.
I do have these printed documents but I didn't see where it showed, which classes where covered by the Clep General Education exams. I know they're accepted but which classes are they covering?
Silk1, Page 37 and 38 of the Business and Technology Catalog shows which CLEP/DANTES/ECE tests cover business core courses. As for Arts and Sciences credits, Excelsior excepts all of the CLEPS and DANTES tests for credit except the Freshman and English Composition CLEPS cannot be used for the written English requirement. So, you could take the following to complete your Arts and Sciences component for the degree: CLEP Humanities CLEP Natural Sciences CLEP Social Science and History CLEP American Literature CLEP Biology CLEP PreCalculus CLEP American Government DANTES Statistics CLEP Introduction to Psychology CLEP History of US I CLEP History of US 2 ECE English Composition CLEP Chemistry CLEP Introductory Sociology This is just one combination of tests that you could take.
I don't actually have to be enrolled at Excelsior to begin taking Clep and Dantes, right? Do they care about the order of testing?
No, you don't have to be enrolled in Excelsior to start taking tests. In fact, you can start taking tests and have them sent to Excelsior and Excelsior will hang on to the test scores for 6 months. (at least I think it's 6 months) Once you enroll, all of your test scores will already be there. Or, you can take the tests and opt to not send them anywhere and when you are ready to enroll, you can request a transcript from the college board and the DSST people. It will cost $20 for a college board transcript will all your CLEP scores. It will also cost $20 for the DSST transcript with your all of your DSST scores. Order of testing doesn't matter either.
