One of the things that convinced me to enroll at Penn
Foster College
rather than another nationally-accredited school is the fact that many of the
courses in Penn Foster’s degree programs are reviewed by the American Council
on Education, or ACE. The vast majority
of colleges and universities, including those that are regionally-accredited,
follow the ACE recommendations for credit transfers. That means that even though Penn
Foster College
is nationally-accredited, many of the courses in its degree programs will
transfer to a regionally-accredited college.
That’s often not the case for other nationally-accredited institutions
which do not have their courses reviewed by ACE.
ACE also reviews workplace and military training programs and
recommends many of them for college-level credit when transferred to an
institution of higher learning. For
example, my Navy boot camp and military journalism training is good for nearly
90 credit hours. Workplace training
courses at companies like IBM and Home Depot have also been evaluated for
college-level credit.
I was curious about how many of my first-semester courses at
Penn Foster had actually been reviewed by ACE, so I checked it out. You can find the credit recommendations at www.acenet.edu/nationalguide . You
have to register to use the national guide, but it is free and easy to
obtain.
It turns out that all but two of my first semester courses
are reviewed by ACE. The one-credit
Information Literacy and Penn Foster’s English Composition courses are not
evaluated for college level credit, according to ACE. I plan to get around this by taking the
English Composition w/essay CLEP exam immediately after I take the Penn Foster
course. CLEP exams are accepted by
nearly every college and university, although many of them do place limits on
the amount of CLEP credit they will accept.
This means that once I finish the first semester at Penn
Foster College
and pass the end-of-semester proctored examination, I will have 14 credit hours
from Penn Foster which can be transferred when I (eventually) advance to
another college for my bachelor degree.
ACE also has a transcript service which will compile all of
your ACE-evaluated college courses and training programs onto one
transcript. ACE can then release your
transcript to any college at any time once you apply for admission. This is much easier than trying to track down
multiple transcripts from several sources.
I have found ACE to be a very important, yet often
overlooked, resource for the adult learner.
If you are considering pursuing studies as an adult student, you should definitely
try to ACE your previous training and courses.