The broad cost breakdown is as follows:
- $77 to the College Board
- About $25 for the testing center fee
- $15+ for used textbooks bought online
So let's say you take the CLEP Principles of Marketing. You pass it and pick up 3 credits. What is the total cost per credit?
$39
And that's assuming that you don't take those books you bought and resell them for a profit.
What about the CLEP English Literature for 6 credits? The costs are still the same. So what does the dollar per credit look like now?
$19.50
Let's take this to the extreme and assume that you take the CLEP Spanish Language test for 12 credits (you have to score fairly high to get this amount, just passing gets you 6 credit). Now the price per credit is a whopping
$9.75
Excited yet?
Perhaps you're wondering what the average cost per credit is for the run-of-the-mill college. Well, it varies greatly, but here are a few figures.
- The typical two-year student spends about $2,713 for tuition per year, which works out to about $90 per credit hour for a 60 credit degree.
- 47% of all full-time undergraduate college students attend a four-year college for $9,000 or less per year for tuition and fees. With a bachelor's degree being 120 credits that's $300 or less.
- A private four-year college might charge as much as $35,000 or more in yearly tuition and fees. That comes out to about $1,166 or more per credit.
- Just for fun, we'll look at Harvard. You can get an undergraduate degree there for over $50,000, and that totals up to an astounding $1,666 or more per credit hour.
I hope that you see how valuable this is and how it can apply to your specific goals and aspirations! How can CLEP help you stick to your budget?
