Today, I am wrapping up the “How to Get Your Bachelor’s in Less, For Less” series with some common questions we are asked. For those of you who have already been through college or aren’t planning to attend, thanks for bearing with me these past six Fridays!

If you’re just joining us, read the first five parts of the series:

• Introduction: Preliminary Questions and Defining the Terms
• Pros and Cons of a Non-Traditional (Distance) College Course
• CLEPs and DANTES: Two Major Credit-Earning Tests
• Resources to Prepare for CLEPs and DANTES 
• The Three Major Distance Learning Colleges

Does earning a degree through distance learning hurt your chances at grad/law school?

Joshua and I originally earned our degrees because we wanted to go to China to teach. At that time at least, we were told it didn’t matter where we got our degrees (or even what major we chose). However, health complications closed that door and we decided to look into Josh attending law school. He took the LSAT (entrance exam) and then sent out applications to dozens of schools. We honestly had no idea how schools would look on a distance degree.

We were pleasantly surprised that even well-known law schools didn’t bat an eye. In our case, having a distance degree didn’t hurt his chance at being accepted to law school or being offered scholarships. 

If you are planning on obtaining a grad or law degree, I think distance learning is actually a really wise choice in many cases. Distance degrees are so much cheaper and will help avoid student loans. They also allow you more time to focus on preparing for further schooling.

Can high school students take CLEPs?

Yes! It’s a great way to start college with some of the basic courses already behind you. The College Board (official CLEP center] even devotes part of their site to home school and high school students!

Can you get scholarships or grants for distance learning?

Yes! I’m not sure if this is a new development or not (we didn’t know about it!) but when I was researching the three major distance colleges for last week’s post, they all had a financial aid office and offered numerous grants!  (Read that post for links to their financial aid offices.)

You are a homemaker, why did you get a degree (and was it worthwhile)?

Being a homemaker was my dream since I was a little girl. I hoped and prayed that I would get married. I am the oldest of eight and spent countless happy hours learning how to run a home from my mom.

My parents home schooled my siblings and me and placed great value on a good education. They sacrificed their time and money to ensure that we received the best schooling they could provide. Geting a college degree was something my dad highly encouraged. He knew that I wanted to home school someday if I was blessed with children. In our state growing up, there were no educational requirements for parents who wanted to home schooled. But none of us know where God will lead in the future or what laws might be put in place. We agreed that having a bachelor’s degree would be a wise move in case it were ever required for homeschooling.

Plus, if Joshua never did ask to marry me (since *he* is the one I was praying would ask, you know!) I could use that degree to teach in China.

While I wanted to get my degree, I also wanted to be a homemaker someday. I didn’t want to saddle a future marriage with student loans. A distance degree was the perfect answer. It allowed me to learn at my own pace, pay cash and not wind up with loans for a degree I might not need or use!

What about you? If you’ve earned any college credit through distance learning, I’d love to know your experience! 

linked up at Works for Me Wednesday and Frugal Friday

photo by Mary Gober

In the past three weeks we’ve defined distance learning (otherwise known as a non-traditional college route); discussed its pros and cons and taken a look at the two most common credit-earning exams: CLEPs and Dantes.

Now it’s time to discuss how to prepare for the exams.

Not only does earning credit-by-examination save considerably on per-credit cost, you also don’t have to purchase highly priced textbooks. I about died when Joshua started law school and we had to fork over $80 for the cheapest used textbook on Amazon. We hardly spent that much for all of our undergrad resources combined.

Most of the resources necessary to prepare for CLEP or Dantes exams we checked out free from the library!

Resources to Prepare for Credit-by-Examination

Get to Know the Exams:

The first step when preparing for any test is to familiarize yourself with the exam.

There are 33 CLEP exams. The Collage Board describes the tests and offers a few sample questions. The Official CLEP Study Guide is published by the creators of the CLEP exams and offers full length practice tests, as well as recommendations for preparing for the exam. We took numerous CLEP exams and found the Official Study Guide to be an invaluable resource for checking our readiness to take the exam.

If you want to take a Dantes, GetCollegeCredit.com offers a detailed overview of each test with sample questions. The writers of the exam authored the Official Guide to Mastering DSST Exams to prepare students for their eight most popular exams.

Start studying:

Once you know what you need to study, it’s time to get busy!

Teaching Company Lectures: I absolutely LOVE these! The Teaching Company recruits distinguished professors from around the world to lecture on their area of expertise. They are fairly expensive, but we raided our library’s huge collection. The lectures cover everything from Mastering Differential Equations to The Classics of Russian Literature.

The best part? You can listen while you drive, do dishes or fold laundry! 

My very favorite professor is Timothy Taylor who teaches on Economics. I listened to these while still living at home with my family. The lectures were like a magnet. My siblings inched their way into the kitchen so they could listen too. Timothy Taylor even got an 8-year-old to beg to dry dishes, just so she could listen to the history of economics. Impressive, huh?

Instant Cert: Instant Cert is great for areas in which you need a lot of work. It uses a series of multiple choice questions with detailed answers to quickly help you grasp the pertinent information.

I was delighted with how quickly it helped me prepare for my most dreaded CLEP: College Mathematics. In fact, rather than this CLEP taking the most time to prepare for, I was ready to take the exam in only a couple of weeks.

 Membership is $20 a month and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee: if you decide you don’t like it during the first month, just cancel and your money will be refunded (no questions asked!)

Instant Cert also hosts a forum, which you can access for free, that is full of great information about schools, tests, etc…

Dummies or Complete Idiot Guides: If you prefer an actual book, these series have guides to almost every subject imaginable. Sometimes if you’ve listened to a lecture on a subject, it’s useful to follow-up with a glance through one of these guides. I spent an couple hours reading over the The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Economics after listening to Timothy Taylor’s lectures and together they covered all I needed to know for the two Economic CLEP exams.

Conclusion:

Thanks to a wonderful library system, we spent about the same on all four years of college credit than we did on just one of Joshua’s law books. (We purchased one month of Instant Cert flashcards and The Official CLEP Study Guide, and wouldn’t have needed to purchase it, but checked it out from the library SO many times we eventually decided it would be worth it! We also ordered a few other books that are no longer necessary.) Even if your library isn’t as extensive as ours was, preparing for a CLEP or Dantes exam is considerably less expensive than a regular college course!

Even if you’re going to a traditional college, I highly recommend that you consider testing out of some of your general education courses. It will save you time and money.

If you, like us, want to get your entire degree through examination, join me next week when we’ll cover the three major colleges that offer degrees non-traditionally and the pros and cons of each.

linked up at Works for Me Wednesday and Frugal Friday

(Full disclosure: The links to products in this post are my referral links.)