Using ASU Courses instead of Accuplacer

Need to take the TSI, Accuplacer, Compass, or another placement exam? You might be able to have it waived by completing a course instead.

College placement exams are sometimes required to make sure your student is “college-ready” for dual enrollment or regular enrollment. Typically, this means passing a test that evaluates your student’s reading, writing, and math. Some students are nervous testers, don’t test well, aren’t close to a college testing center, or don’t have access to online testing.

Testing center access may be limited or restricted during Covid.

What you might not know, is that this placement requirement is generally only for students who haven’t yet taken a college-level English or Math course. Since a placement test is often required to take college-level English or Math, this creates a “catch-22” for students who don’t want to take a placement test, or who don’t have access.

As a remedy, some of our students have chosen to take ASU’s ENG 101 English Composition 1, and/or MAT-117 College Algebra. ASU’s Earned Admissions Program does not require placement tests or transcripts to enroll! It’s worth finding out if your target college(s) will accept these courses for transfer in lieu of their placement exams for dual enrollment or admissions.

Additionally, some schools only require students to pass a portion of the placement tests, or transfer in a prerequisite course and allow access to many courses. For example, at one of our local community colleges, students can take nearly any course by simply passing the reading portion of the placement exam. In order to take a math course, the student must pass the math portion. Likewise, a passing score on the written portion may be required for writing classes and perhaps other courses, such as Government or History. Colleges often specify on their websites whether students may take and pass only a portion of their placement tests to start taking courses and whether certain courses may be restricted based on placement test scores. If the targeted college will accept ASU’s ENG 101 for the reading/writing portion and/or MAT-117 for the math portion of these placement exams, the student may be able to bypass placement testing entirely.

As always, please check with your targeted college to make sure that they will accept these courses instead of the placement exams, and that they transfer to the college as you expect. ENG 101 English Composition and MAT-117 College Algebra are staples in the General Education realm, so it should be fairly easy to get approval.

ASU Earned Admissions Course Enrollment Requirements

Enrolling is easy! You pay $25 to start a course, and only pay $400 at the end if you like the grade. If you don’t like the grade, don’t pay, and there’s no record of it. Students can retake courses as many times as they’d like, until they reach the grade they want. It’s also a great low-risk high-reward way to test the waters for a new dual enrollment student while protecting the student’s GPA!

• No SAT/ACT
• No placement test
• No high school transcript
• No college transcript
• Prerequisites are a suggestion, but not enforced
• Yes, you only need a government-issued photo-id with the student’s name visible

Things people have used successfully for an ID as of 5/15/20:
Driver’s license/permit
Passport
DoD dependent ID
Public School ID
Umbrella School ID
Homeschool ID w/School name, student name, birthdate and photo

One more thing!

If you enroll in one of these courses, be sure to join our ASU Homeschooling for College Credit Facebook group! You’ll learn how to get the most out of the program with us!