By Zach Skillings
Zach Skillings is the Scholarships360 Newsletter Editor. He specializes in college admissions and strives to answer important questions about higher education. When he’s not contributing to Scholarships360, Zach writes about travel, music, film, and culture. His work has been published in Our State Magazine, Ladygunn Magazine, The Nocturnal Times, and The Lexington Dispatch. Zach graduated from Elon University with a degree in Cinema and Television Arts.
Edited by Maria Geiger
Maria Geiger is Director of Content at Scholarships360. She is a former online educational technology instructor and adjunct writing instructor. In addition to education reform, Maria’s interests include viewpoint diversity, blended/flipped learning, digital communication, and integrating media/web tools into the curriculum to better facilitate student engagement. Maria earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from Monmouth University, an M. Ed. in Education from Monmouth University, and a Virtual Online Teaching Certificate (VOLT) from the University of Pennsylvania.
Updated: March 14th, 2024
If you’re wondering how to get your CLEP scores, you’ve come to the right place. Fortunately, the process is simple and straightforward. In this guide, we’ll break down how to get your CLEP scores, what they mean, and how to send them to your school.
The great thing about CLEP is that you can access your scores as soon as you’re finished with the exam. You can view your results a few different ways, which we’ve listed below:
After taking your exam, you’ll receive an unofficial score report before leaving the test center. The only exception is for the “College Composition” and “Spanish with Writing” exams. These exams require human evaluation and cannot be scored immediately. You’ll be notified via email when your scores are available, typically within 2 – 3 weeks.
You can also view your official scores online by logging into your CLEP My Portal account. Use the same login information you used to register for the exam. Once logged in, go to the My CLEP Exam Scores page to view your results. Your scores will be available online one business day following your exam.
If you take an exam remotely, your score will be displayed on screen immediately after completion of the exam.
Nearly all exams are multiple-choice and scored by a computer, with the exception of the “College Composition” and “Spanish with Writing” exams. These tests feature essay questions in addition to multiple choice sections. The essays are graded by a committee of college professors, then combined with the multiple choice scores.
For multiple choice questions, you receive one point for each correct answer. Points aren’t deducted for wrong or skipped answers, meaning you should strive to answer each question on the exam. There’s no harm in guessing if you’re not sure about the right answer.
Exams are scored on a scale from 20 to 80. The American Council on Education (ACE) recommends that colleges grant credit for a score of 50 or higher, but schools are allowed to set their own policies. Use this searchable database to check the CLEP policies of the schools you’re interested in.
To receive credit for taking CLEP exams, you’ll need to send your scores to your preferred college or university. When you register for your exam, you’ll be prompted to select the institution where you’d like to send your scores. Your score will be immediately sent to this school once you complete your exam, unless you decide to opt out (see the next section). You can send your score to one institution for free.
If you want to send your score to more than one college, you must request a transcript and pay a $20 fee for each additional institution. To do this, go to your My CLEP Account menu and select “Request a Transcript”. The transcript request process is slightly different for military test takers .
No. The College Board gives you the option of canceling your score to prevent it from getting sent to your school. However, you have to make the decision to cancel before knowing whether you passed or not. Because of this, it’s best to go ahead and send in your score (even if you feel like you failed).
The only time you might cancel your score is if your college has a limit on CLEP attempts and you’re nearly certain you failed. However, most colleges have no such limit. As a result, you should hardly ever choose to cancel your scores.
Yes. If you didn’t pass the first time around, you can retake the exam after three months. If you retake the exam within the three-month period, your score will be considered invalid, and your test fee will be forfeited.
Failed CLEP exams will not affect your GPA, nor will they change any admissions decisions by a school. The only downside to a failed exam is the money and time spent on it. You won’t be able to take it again for another three months, but once you become eligible again, you can learn from your mistakes, retake it, and make use of all the time you’ve spent studying.
Our guide to improving your SAT score might come in handy in trying to retake a CLEP exam. It’s a good approach to learning from your standardized test results and score better next time.
Good luck out there, and make sure to check out our free scholarship search tool to help you graduate from college debt-free!
Colleges are recommended to grant credit to any students who score a 50 or higher on their CLEP exams. So, while each institution can make their own rules about what they’ll grant credit for, you should be proud of scoring a 50. If you’ve put in a lot of work studying and preparing you should be proud of your score regardless. Taking exams isn’t easy, so don’t go too hard on yourself. You can always try again!
While a score of 50 is considered passing on a CLEP exam, that is not the same as receiving a fifty percent. Receiving a 50 on a CLEP exam is roughly equivalent to receiving a seventy percent. So, while guidelines for colleges recommend granting credit for scores of 50 (seventy percent) or higher, it is not likely that a score of fifty percent will be a passing score.
Failing a CLEP exam obviously isn’t what you want, but it happens and that’s okay. You are able to retake CLEP exams, which means you can always take the three month waiting period in between test tries and study hard, so that you can come back and hopefully do better. The one thing you should be aware of is if your school has a limit of how many scores they’ll accept. If you did not do well, it’s advisable to not send a bad score and wait until you retake the test to send them a better score.
