NO! In order for any college to see any CLEP scores, your teen has to initiate the process. You’ll pay the fee and the passing scores will be sent to the college you designated. There is one exception.
On test day, when your teen sits down to take their exam (at home using remote proctoring or at a testing center) the test will ask them if they’d like to send this score to a college.
Always select “no.”
When you select “yes” then the score is sent no matter what and, in that single instance, a failing score would be forwarded.
Yes, you can save money when you send it at the time of testing, but it’s not worth the risk in my opinion. For most of you, you’ll have to eventually send a new transcript with all the CLEP exams anyway since colleges won’t save all your random score reports for years.
Where you take the exam won’t matter- so even if you take the CLEP exam at the college you’ll be attending later, they won’t have access to the score report without you/your teen sending it to them.
Best Practices
- When you take your CLEP exam, do not have the score report sent automatically.
- Accumulate CLEP exam scores/college credit until you enroll in your target college.
- Send one official CLEP transcript to your target college.
- Pay one fee. It will include all passing scores.
- Parents: do not include the CLEP scores on a high school transcript.
- Parents: do not include the word “CLEP” on a high school transcript.
- Parents: do not use CLEP scores as part of a high school GPA.
- Students using Common Application will NOT be prompted to disclose their CLEP scores on their college application.
- CLEP scores should be evaluated by a college’s Registrar – not by Admissions
Other things to know about CLEP
Grade Point Average: CLEP exams taken in college aren’t usually part of your teen’s college GPA.
College reporting: Scores are confidential, and a student may elect to send their scores to a college but a student is not required to send scores to a college.
Disclosure: Unlike the classes your teen takes through dual enrollment, a student does not have to disclose that they’ve taken a CLEP exam.
Retake: For all students, you must wait 3 months to retake an exam that you’ve failed. It’s really important to note that CLEP’s registration website doesn’t block you from registering or taking a test that you’ve failed- but they WILL VOID YOUR SCORE if it hasn’t been a full 3 months to the day, so you’ll want to make sure you’re waiting at LEAST 3 months before taking the test again.
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