My son is currently a sophomore in college. I figured I would try to get my degree before he does.

As for having your son CLEP after high school, make sure you check out the college he is going to attend. I know in community college where I'm getting some of my courses completed, as well as my son's University, they only allow general clep (excluding composition) and not any of the subject CLEP exams.

The other thing you want to decide is what degree he plans to pursue. I'm trying to mix both courses from my local school in addition to CLEP/DSST. Reason being, when I contacted McGeorge School of Law with interest of possible admissions to law school, I asked them about the criteria when offering scholarships. Here is his partial response:

"...Allyson passed along your question about CLEP courses. Candidly, I think the Admissions Committee would prefer to see actual course work done. However, we do not have a limit of classes you can test out of so long as you secure your degree from an accredited school."

I also called the Dean of Admissions for further clarification because I want to CLEP on 10 exams and asked if that was too much. He said that was fine and if an applicant is over 30 years of age, they don't put too much weight on college, but want to make sure you still have a good GPA. They would take my 16 years of work experience and LSAT into account then what courses I completed in college. On the other hand, if my son applied and has limited work experience, they will review his transcripts and if he does everything online and CLEP, they will have reservations, as they don't know how he would fit in with other students in a class room environment.

As for my son, he is going to pursue his MArch degree and in California, it's very competitive to get into those programs. They mentioned CLEP general is okay, but no guarantees because his transcripts and test scores would be compared to others for both scholarships and acceptance.

Sorry about the long response, but you want to make sure you cover all basis and find out what direction your child plans to take. If he plans to get into a profession that requires a graduate degree, you will want to do your home work and asked a bunch of "what if" questions with the dean of the school he plans to pursue. If I didn't do my homework on my son's MArch degree, he would have been really upset because they have a completely different path on general courses and what is accepted compared to other programs in the same school.

Joe