02-01-2016, 11:29 AM
Honestly, if you don't need the ACE credit, I wouldn't bother with Straighterline. You're paying way too much for the priviledge of watching slideshows and taking quizzes.
Study.com has a couple of less expensive monthly subscription services - you want the cheapest one, since you're not taking the classes for credit. They've got material aligned with almost every CLEP out there. Better yet, check out Saylor, which is completely free.
Heck, if what you're looking for is the experience of taking college level classes, but without the pressure of passing, you could also look into Coursera, edx, etc. ASU partnered with Edx for their global freshman project - it's silly expensive if you want to take it for credit, but if you just want to experience college level work and use it as a study resource then just take the free version.
(Generic "you", btw, since you're actually asking for someone else).
And, for what it's worth, while I haven't taken CLEP and Straighterline for the same course, I have taken a variety of CLEP and SL at this point and my experience has been that SL is very textbook specific - they're specifically looking for answers foulnd in the particular book they've chosen, so even if you have prior knowledge of a subject, it often doesn't help much. On the other hand, CLEP is very generic - they try to create a test that can be passed if you've prepped with any subject appropriate materials. If you go through the effort of studying SL's material in depth, then yeah, it's probably enough to pass a CLEP, but if anything it's overkill. It's making it way more difficult than it has to be.
One idea you may not have considered - there are regionally accredited colleges with self paced classes for credit. Some of the bigger ones are University of Idaho Independent study, CSU-pueblo, BYU independent study, etc. It's more expensive than Straighterline, but it's real college classes from an actual university, which will have much broader transfer acceptance than even CLEP - and you'll get things like a GPA, which CLEP doesn't help with. Those three all offer IS classes for around $500 for a 3-credit class.
Study.com has a couple of less expensive monthly subscription services - you want the cheapest one, since you're not taking the classes for credit. They've got material aligned with almost every CLEP out there. Better yet, check out Saylor, which is completely free.
Heck, if what you're looking for is the experience of taking college level classes, but without the pressure of passing, you could also look into Coursera, edx, etc. ASU partnered with Edx for their global freshman project - it's silly expensive if you want to take it for credit, but if you just want to experience college level work and use it as a study resource then just take the free version.
(Generic "you", btw, since you're actually asking for someone else).
And, for what it's worth, while I haven't taken CLEP and Straighterline for the same course, I have taken a variety of CLEP and SL at this point and my experience has been that SL is very textbook specific - they're specifically looking for answers foulnd in the particular book they've chosen, so even if you have prior knowledge of a subject, it often doesn't help much. On the other hand, CLEP is very generic - they try to create a test that can be passed if you've prepped with any subject appropriate materials. If you go through the effort of studying SL's material in depth, then yeah, it's probably enough to pass a CLEP, but if anything it's overkill. It's making it way more difficult than it has to be.
One idea you may not have considered - there are regionally accredited colleges with self paced classes for credit. Some of the bigger ones are University of Idaho Independent study, CSU-pueblo, BYU independent study, etc. It's more expensive than Straighterline, but it's real college classes from an actual university, which will have much broader transfer acceptance than even CLEP - and you'll get things like a GPA, which CLEP doesn't help with. Those three all offer IS classes for around $500 for a 3-credit class.
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