So I have been reading about students taking exams to get credits for school from life experience. I was a Real Estate agent for about 4 years. Do you think that any schools would give me credit for that.
Sure, it just depends how much you'd like to pay. As a general rule, most of the colleges that offer credit for life experience are diploma mills.
That's a really deceptive answer, and not helpful to what the poster asked. While it's true there are a lot of fake schools that grant worthless degrees for life experience, there are lots and lots of ways to convert your lived experiences into legitimate college credit, and that is a large part of what schools such as Charter Oak, Excelsior, and Thomas Edison do for their students. Through the portfolio process, you can find any regionally accredited school that offers a course in a subject area where you have knowledge, and "challenge" that course... depending on the school and the professor, you might be asked to do an oral or written exam, or to write about your experiences, or in some other way document your knowledge. Within the real estate field, if you poke around at different schools, I'm sure you could find probably 10 to 20 courses (3 credits each) which would match your experience if you had a diverse set of experiences and transactions as an agent or broker. Off the top of my head, I can think of courses I've seen various RA schools offer on real-estate related appraisal and valuation, mortgage financing, real estate law, contracts, negotiation, accounting and recordkeeping, marketing, IT for the real estate agent, and lots of other things. While you might not have all the knowledge necessary for all of those courses, between your experience and a little bit of brush-up by reading some current texts, you should be able to earn quite a few credits. There are literally hundreds of other subject areas that some regionally accredited college somewhere offers a credit course in, and if you can find the course description, you can challenge that for portfolio. So there may be lots of other areas where you have knowledge that could be converted into credit. Additionally, there are a number of schools (Ohio University-Athens and Brigham Young stick out in my mind) that allow you to take the final exam in lieu of taking a course, and if you pass, get the credit for it. And there are CLEP and DANTES exams which do the same thing. Betweeen portfolio and exams, you can amass a large number of the credits needed to graduate, and many people have gotten their entire degrees via exam. Take a look at these three articles which cover this topic in more detail. Degree Info - The B.S. in Levitation Degree Info - Proficiency Examinations Degree Info - The Unofficial Thomas Edison State College Portfolio Guide
Even my community college will do a portfolio assessment, I'm sure you'll find somewhere that fits your needs well. As usual Chip and everybody else have/will wisely bring up the "big three" Charter Oak, Excelsior, and Thomas Edison. That's usually a good place to start if you are looking for flexibility. If you are interested in getting ahead of the game in additional ways to a portfolio assessment you will want to stick around a learn about CLEP, DANTES, ALEKS, Straighter line, NFA, FEMA IS, and other amazing ways to earn credit on the cheap in short periods of time, particularly as they relate to those three schools.
You sound like you are looking for the Big Three that rickyjo mentions above. Many other colleges offer similar programs. For example, SUNY- Empire State College has a portfolio that, if my understanding of its fees is correct, is much less expensive than the Big Three. That's just one example, I have a feeling (but have never researched this, myself) that there are plenty of schools that do this as well. The thing is, these colleges won't give you credit for "life experience," rather, for "college-level learning." You can't just get credit for having a job for a few years, you need to demonstrate that somehow, someway, you gained an education along the way.
I applied at TESC and will be attending in December. I should of mentioned that. Thanks for all the help.
