My husband used CLEP/DANTES to gain credit in the following business courses: Financial Accounting Marketing Managment He now wants to apply to an MBA program that will allow a student to waive out of these 3 courses provided they received a "B" or better in the course at the undergraduate level. I asked the program Director how they would look at CLEP/DANTES scores. He said that if it can be proven that his score was at a "B" level, he could waive the course. It was his understanding that the letter grade associated with the score would be dependent upon the relative test scores of other students who took the exam at that time. How does one go about finding out the corresponding letter grade if the school that granted the credit did not report a letter grade? The credit was given at Old Domion University (Norfolk, VA) His test scores and dates are below: Principles of Management 8/20/1998 - 56 Principles of Marketing 4/22/1999 - 54 Principles of Accounting 5/13/1999 - 53
Tough call - I know that Excelsior grants Pass/Fail grades for CLEP Marketing and a letter grade for Management. According to the latest cut score sheet 56 would give you a "B" grade for that one - but this is based on the computer version...not the paper version (which in '98/'99 I think was still the way they were given). The fact is there is no standard letter grading scheme to my knowledge - each college approaches CLEP acceptance and grading individually. What you may be able to do for Marketing is try and find out what percentile he fell into for this exam. If, for example, he was high up (e.g. 75th and up) you may be able to justify on that basis that it should equate to a B. For the DANTES Financial Accounting, Excelsior currently grants a "B" for a 51, so it's possible perhaps to argue this one - although I think that Excelsior changes the cut score each year for the DANTES exams. To download the PDF listing all of the scores , you'll need to sign up at Excelsior's site (free) - look for the publication entitled "A Student Guide to Credit by Exam at EC & The Assessment Catalog". Although Excelsior is not Old Dominion, you may be able to convince the program director that with standardized tests an apples-apples comparison applies. Good luck to you! Cheers, Mark
