5 Exams Accepted for College Credit and More

Key Infor­ma­tion:

• High school stu­dents can earn col­lege cred­its through var­i­ous exams such as AP, IB, CLEP, DSST, and A‑Level exams.
• Stu­dents can poten­tial­ly grad­u­ate from col­lege ear­li­er and reduce their over­all tuition costs. Pro­grams like AP and dual cred­it cours­es often come with min­i­mal fees com­pared to col­lege tuition.
• It’s cru­cial for stu­dents to ver­i­fy which exams and scores are accept­ed for cred­it at their intend­ed col­leges. Con­sult­ing with aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sors and using tools pro­vid­ed by exam orga­ni­za­tions can help ensure that the cred­its earned in high school will be rec­og­nized by their future colleges.

Earn­ing col­lege cred­it while in high school is a great way to get ahead with your edu­ca­tion. It’s also more bud­get-friend­ly — aside from pay­ing the fees asso­ci­at­ed with pop­u­lar col­lege cred­it exams, you can often earn cred­it tuition-free and save mon­ey on college.

In addi­tion to these ben­e­fits, you can look for­ward to grad­u­at­ing from col­lege ear­ly. Earn­ing just 15 col­lege cred­its in high school saves you an entire semes­ter of stud­ies. Many stu­dents earn far more cred­its than that, though.

Get ready to jump-start your col­le­giate career by explor­ing some of the most com­mon ways to earn col­lege cred­its in high school! 

Relat­ed:

• What are CLEP Exams and Why Should I Take Them?
• Five Ways to Get a Faster Bachelor’s Degree
• High Accep­tance Rate Col­leges for Spe­cif­ic Majors
• The Val­ue of Accel­er­at­ed Bachelor’s Degrees for High School Students

Types of Exams Accepted for College Credit

Some exams for col­lege cred­it are more well-known than oth­ers. AP cours­es, for exam­ple, are extreme­ly pop­u­lar in U.S. high schools. The same goes for Inter­na­tion­al Bac­calau­re­ate. Oth­er options include dual cred­it exams, the CLEP exam, DSST, and oth­ers. Let’s explore each one in greater detail.

Advanced Placement (AP) Exams

AP exam cred­its trans­late direct­ly to course cred­its at many col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. So, for exam­ple, if you earn a sat­is­fac­to­ry score on the AP Psy­chol­o­gy exam (e.g., a 3 or high­er), you would earn the equiv­a­lent cred­it at the col­lege of your choice.

In oth­er sit­u­a­tions, though, AP exams are not accept­ed for cred­it. Instead, your exam score tests you out of a sub­ject. Using the exam­ple above, you would test out of Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chol­o­gy if your AP Psy­chol­o­gy exam score is high enough (again, 3 or high­er, in most cas­es). Psy­chol­o­gy is just one exam­ple, though. You can take AP exams in a broad range of subjects:

• Arts (e.g., Art His­to­ry, Drawing)
• Eng­lish (e.g., Eng­lish Lan­guage and Com­po­si­tion, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and Composition)
• His­to­ry and Social Sci­ences (Euro­pean His­to­ry, Unit­ed States History)
• Math and Com­put­er Sci­ence (Cal­cu­lus AB, Com­put­er Sci­ence A)
• Sci­ences (Biol­o­gy, Chemistry)
• World Lan­guages and Cul­tures (French Lan­guage and Cul­ture, Latin)

International Baccalaureate (IB) Exams

The IB pro­gram offers a dif­fer­ent path­way to earn­ing col­lege cred­it than Advanced Place­ment. In most cas­es, the col­lege cred­it you receive is based on your scores on the six sub­ject area IB exams:

• Sci­ences (e.g., Physics, Chemistry)
• Math (e.g., Analy­sis and Approach­es, Appli­ca­tions and Interpretation)
• Arts (e.g., Dance, Film)
• Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture (e.g., Lit­er­a­ture, Lit­er­a­ture and Performance)
• Lan­guage Acqui­si­tion (e.g., Clas­si­cal Languages)
• Indi­vid­u­als and Soci­eties (e.g., Geog­ra­phy, History)

Fur­ther­more, you can take these cours­es at a stan­dard or high­er lev­el. In some instances, col­lege cred­it is only offered if you com­plete an IB course at the high­er lev­el. Usu­al­ly, this cred­it is equiv­a­lent to what would be earned in the same class on a col­lege cam­pus. For exam­ple, if you com­plete the high­er-lev­el Span­ish course, you would be grant­ed cred­it for tak­ing Span­ish 101 or a sim­i­lar col­lege class.

In oth­er cas­es, IB diplo­ma col­lege cred­it might be earned by com­plet­ing the entire IB cur­ricu­lum. Com­plet­ing class­es in each of the six IB areas list­ed above and earn­ing sat­is­fac­to­ry scores on each exam might equal as much as a full year of col­lege cred­its (often a max­i­mum of 24 cred­it hours).

While there might be an Advanced Place­ment vs Inter­na­tion­al Bac­calau­re­ate debate regard­ing which one is bet­ter, at the end of the day, either option is effec­tive for earn­ing a lot of col­lege credit.

College-Level Examination Program (CLEP)

CLEP exams are avail­able in near­ly three dozen intro­duc­to­ry col­lege sub­jects in the fol­low­ing fields:

• His­to­ry and Social Sci­ences (e.g., Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment, Prin­ci­ples of Macroeconomics)
• Com­po­si­tion and Lit­er­a­ture (e.g., Col­lege Com­po­si­tion, Eng­lish Literature)
• Sci­ence and Math­e­mat­ics (e.g., Cal­cu­lus, Chemistry)
• Busi­ness (e.g., Finan­cial Account­ing, Prin­ci­ples of Marketing)
• World Lan­guages (e.g., Span­ish, German)

CLEP cred­its are earned sole­ly based on the exam. There are no asso­ci­at­ed cours­es; if you pass the tests, you can earn cred­it for the equiv­a­lent cours­es at near­ly 3,000 colleges.

DSST Exams (formerly DANTES)

Orig­i­nal­ly, DSST exams for cred­it were avail­able only to mil­i­tary mem­bers (and were known as DANTES). Now, these exams are avail­able to any­one as a means of earn­ing col­lege cred­it for knowl­edge acquired out­side a tra­di­tion­al classroom.

Like CLEP exams, earn­ing DSST cred­it doesn’t require you to take a class. Instead, if you pass the test, you can earn cred­it at near­ly 2,000 col­leges. Tests are avail­able in more than 30 areas, such as:

• Human Resource Management
• The Civ­il War and Reconstruction
• Intro­duc­tion to Law Enforcement
• Crim­i­nal Justice
• Envi­ron­men­tal Science

A‑Level Exams (Advanced Levels)

A‑Level exams are admin­is­tered in the Unit­ed King­dom and oth­er nations as part of spe­cif­ic stud­ies after stu­dents com­plete four key stages of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. These cours­es are step­ping stones from sec­ondary edu­ca­tion to high­er edu­ca­tion and include two years of stud­ies in spe­cif­ic fields before tak­ing exams. You can choose from near­ly 60 sub­jects, includ­ing the fol­low­ing that are most like­ly to earn cred­it at U.S. colleges:

• Eng­lish Literature
• Infor­ma­tion Technology
• Eco­nom­ics
• Soci­ol­o­gy
• Psy­chol­o­gy

If you search “A‑Level exams in USA,” you’ll find that while A‑Levels aren’t admin­is­tered here, some insti­tu­tions offer cred­it for sat­is­fac­to­ry A‑Level scores. It’s best to con­sult with the col­leges you’re inter­est­ed in attend­ing to learn more about their spe­cif­ic A‑Level trans­fer policies.

Other Examinations

The list of col­lege place­ment exams and dual cred­it exams extends even fur­ther than those list­ed above. Less com­mon options for poten­tial­ly gain­ing col­lege cred­it through test­ing include the following:

How to Find Out What Your College Accepts

A quick review of your college’s web­site is like­ly to reveal its trans­fer cred­it and cred­it-by-exam­i­na­tion poli­cies. You can also con­sult the web­sites of the exams dis­cussed ear­li­er to explore cred­it pos­si­bil­i­ties. For exam­ple, the Col­lege Board’s AP web­site includes a cred­it pol­i­cy search tool that tells you how to trans­fer AP scores to col­lege. You can use the tool to search based on the spe­cif­ic AP course and spe­cif­ic institutions.

Whether you find the infor­ma­tion you need online or not, it’s impor­tant to meet with your aca­d­e­m­ic advi­sor to ensure you can earn cred­it for the exams you take. Get­ting clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the process of earn­ing col­lege admis­sions advanced cred­its can save you a lot of headaches down the road.

Maximizing Your Exam Credits

Learn­ing how to earn col­lege cred­its quick­ly begins with effec­tive­ly plan­ning your high school cur­ricu­lum. Start tak­ing AP or IB cours­es ear­ly on; that way, you have more time to take more class­es and poten­tial­ly earn more col­lege cred­it once you’re done with high school. Sim­i­lar­ly, some cours­es are sequenced, so plan­ning is essen­tial to ensure you take cours­es in the right order and have enough time to take all class­es in the sequence.

A sim­i­lar strat­e­gy is impor­tant if you intend to use dual cred­it cours­es for col­lege cred­it. Again, start­ing ear­ly gives you more time to take more class­es. For exam­ple, tak­ing two dual cred­it cours­es each year of high school can get you the equiv­a­lent of one full year of col­lege studies.

But what if you want to use exam­i­na­tions to earn cred­it? Use the fol­low­ing study tips for CLEP and oth­er tests to improve your performance:

• Famil­iar­ize your­self with the test, includ­ing its for­mat, the sub­ject mat­ter, when it’s offered, and the time pro­vid­ed to com­plete the exam.
• Prac­tice — a lot. Invest in exam prep mate­ri­als, like prac­tice tests, and work on them con­sis­tent­ly over the weeks and months lead­ing up to the test date.
• Get edu­cat­ed in basic test-tak­ing tips. Read instruc­tions and ques­tions thor­ough­ly, don’t spend too much time on one ques­tion, pace your­self, and keep an eye on the clock.
• Get a good night’s sleep the night before the exam. Resist the urge to cram late into the night!
• Eat a good break­fast the morn­ing before the exam. It will help fuel you (and your brain) through the exam.

Conclusion

With col­lege more expen­sive than ever, it’s smart to look for avenues to reduce costs. Earn­ing cred­it by exam­i­na­tion is an excel­lent option. In many cas­es, the exams dis­cussed in this guide are a small frac­tion of the cost of an equiv­a­lent course. In some cas­es, they might even be free.

The key is to iden­ti­fy which exam options are best for you and your aca­d­e­m­ic prepa­ra­tion and do so as ear­ly in your high school career as pos­si­ble. Again, start­ing ear­ly gives you more time to fin­ish the nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tions and earn as much col­lege cred­it in high school as you can. Your guid­ance coun­selor can give you spe­cif­ic details about the pro­grams avail­able at your school.