ACE your classes

tcord1964 — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 02:15:00 GMT

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.

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My Penn Foster College Experience : American Council on Education

ACE your classes