testing out and grades/gpa

[ronjohn]

hello everyone. a friend referred me to this forum and i read some and would be interest in something like liberal art from excelsior college where i could completely test out of all courses. can someone tell me how will the college give me grades or gpa based on my testing out? i am just curious how this process works. thank you.

[sirjake]

Very few testing out credits are graded. Almost all are pass/fail. As such, your GPA is going to be made up of whatever actual courses you have taken. For graduate school (getting in to law school is where I have experience), they actually look at your actual courses from each and every institution you attended, not your GPA as reported by the degree-granting institution. So my GPA was composed of every grade I had ever received at the collegiate level (even non-accredited credits, oddly enough). I had to send transcripts from ALL previously attended schools or face potential disciplinary action.

Excelsior does still offer grades for some DSST exams. I think all of their own ECE exams are graded, though. They don't offer any grades for CLEPs.

See here:
https://www.excelsior.edu/Excelsior_Coll...ore_Charts

I've never heard of another school offering grades for proficiency exams.

Note: I found out that if you have taken an exam previously, and they had grades for that exam back when you took it but don't currently, you get that grade from back when you took it. At least that's the way it worked for me when I was enrolled at Excelsior;That could have changed since, of course.

[ronjohn]

so no way to translate the clep or dsst pass/fail into a grade?
i do want to go for graduate school after at a good university. so will this be a problem if i test out of all the courses?

[peace123]

At Excelsior the non-refreshed DSST exams ( these are based on a 2 digit score rather then the newer ones that have a 3 digit score) will be posted as a grade. The newer refreshed DSST exams will be posted as p/f.

[cookderosa]

so no way to translate the clep or dsst pass/fail into a grade?
i do want to go for graduate school after at a good university. so will this be a problem if i test out of all the courses?

>>

So.....are you at a "good university" now? If so, you have grades. GPA is a cumulation of all of your coursework - ever- not just the last X credits that you earned before your degree.
If you have no grades/credits now, I'd suggest taking just a little step back and deciding exactly how you want to proceed. If you want to go to a "good university" and then grad school, that's awesome....but that path differs significantly from testing out of an EC degree. By university, do you mean somewhere that offers a PhD?

Just so you know, EC is absolutely a regionally accredited college. (associate, bachelors and masters) That's a real term, real accreditation, factual and legitimate. "Good" is in the eye of the beholder. An opinion. I suggest that no matter where you choose, you choose an accredited university/college.

[sirjake]

so no way to translate the clep or dsst pass/fail into a grade?

Pretty much. Except for those listed on the previous Excelsior link that haven't been replaced with "refreshed" exams, you only get a pass/fail, which does give you credit, but does not affect your GPA positively or negatively.

As for whether or not you can go to a good university afterwards for a graduate degree: that depends on a number of factors. As CookDeRosa indicated, "good" is in the eye of the beholder, to a certain extent. What you are calling "good," others may scoff at (or vice versa). Whether or not they admit you will generally be in part due to your GPA, true, but it will/can also largely depend on your ability on standardized tests. I don't know if every discipline values their admissions test as much as law school, but in LS, a high LSAT score was gold. Increasing my score by a mere two points (from 166 to 168) and only three percentage points (93rd to 96th percentile) netted me an additional 25k in scholarship money at what I would call a "good" university (University of Illinois, ranked 23rd for law schools at the time). And I was admitted to Notre Dame University's law school (better name, perhaps, but ranked approximately the same) with a decent scholarship as well.

I was also at least "in the running" at Vanderbilt (ranked 14th at the time) in that I was on the waitlist when I withdrew.

I ended up with a combined undergraduate GPA of 3.66, which wasn't outstanding, but didn't really hurt me. And more of my credits were pass/fail than were graded. So combined with my high LSAT score, I was a competitive applicant.

Not saying any of that to brag (honestly, in a sense I don't care anymore since I decided not to attend law school), but it is relevant to whether or not a student can pursue education beyond a "CLEP degree."

Other factors will almost certainly include: required essays/personal statements, work experience, and letters of recommendation (less important perhaps than the previous two, but still required).

[IgnazSemmelweis]

Hmm. Looks like I could get 5 As by transferring some of my DSSTs to ECE first. I'm all for inflating my GPA as much as possible.

[TMW2010]

Hmm. Looks like I could get 5 As by transferring some of my DSSTs to ECE first. I'm all for inflating my GPA as much as possible.

Cue Picture of Morbo


Anyway... That's not how it works. If you're looking at ultimately using the DSSTs as credit at a school other than EC, they're likely going to want a transcript from DSST directly, and they'll deal with it how they decide to.

Even using EC's credit bank, many places will ask for a transcript from the original organization.

[sirjake]

Cue Picture of Morbo


Anyway... That's not how it works. If you're looking at ultimately using the DSSTs as credit at a school other than EC, they're likely going to want a transcript from DSST directly, and they'll deal with it how they decide to.

Even using EC's credit bank, many places will ask for a transcript from the original organization.

Your mileage may vary, but that's not how it was treated for me. Since Excelsior gave credit for the exams, AND put a grade on it, they took precedent over duplicate tests at other institutions. I literally got about 28 credit hours of A's for nothing more than enrolling at ECE, paying the required fees, and having them send my transcripts to the LSDAS (the organization that compiles grades for law schools). Of course, if you barely passed a bunch of exams, you might end up hurting your GPA with a bunch of B's and/or C's.

Note: I was informed explicitly that the credit bank would *not* work for this because you are not considered an enrolled student in that circumstance. I'm not really sure what status credits banks actually give you. I ended up enrolling in one of their military-type programs because I didn't really need a degree, it was cheaper, and it was not explicitly a military-only program (i.e., it wasn't dishonest for me to enroll there) but was an actual "enrolled student" option. I think it ended up costing me about $550. Well worth it (if I had actually gone to law school :-P).

[cookderosa]

Hmm. Looks like I could get 5 As by transferring some of my DSSTs to ECE first. I'm all for inflating my GPA as much as possible.

<shakes head>

No. That's not how it works. Credits can't be laundered. If you take a DSST, you have "potential credit" not actual credit. The school that you earn your ACTUAL DEGREE from determines the credit awarded (if any). So, if you go to EC, then because THEY give letter grades, you get a letter grade.

IF you transfer again, your DSST credits are evaluated as if they are brand new. The new school decides if/what credit to award- and it will be p/f.