Teen Planner for Homeschool Students

The resources below have a cost. There are some things we just can’t get for free. I think these things are of value or I wouldn’t share them with you.

College Money Decisions

Trade School Programs

Saylor.org

More than 30 free courses that you can use to get college credit. There are no teachers, just materials. Then you take the proctored test (for a cost) and the course is approved for ACE or NCCRS credit.

Hire Cause  (EP Leadership Experience)

Here’s my interview with David Dvorkin, founder of Hire Cause.

We have run their leadership program several times, but we’re not currently registering any more students for future sessions. This program inspired the free EP course called Cornerstone. The culminating project in the course is what we did for the EP Leadership Experience, but in the course we work all year in building up our skills for it. Hire Cause runs the original version of what we called “leadership experience.” Your child can go through that program with a mentor through their site, but it does have a significant cost.

Freshman Year Free

Free self-paced courses with a free CLEP test at the end of the course. Let me know how this goes for you and give us more info as my family hasn’t tried it yet. For instance, it sounds like you have to find your own CLEP/AP test to take at the end. That will probably have to be in person. We’ve had a bad experience once taking an exam at a place and the computer failing and my son losing his test. It is very nice taking exams at home, but FREE is not something to pass up for an inconvenience at the end of the course.

Study.com

(PLEASE SEE THE ABOVE OPTION FOR “FRESHMAN YEAR FREE.” For $200 you get one month to take a course and the test for credit (ACE credit). It can be done. My 17-year-old had no trouble doing that. It was very STRESSFUL fitting in the course for my 13-year-old. We had it planned out and then he realized it said you can’t take the final during the last three days of your time! BE WARNED! He squeezed it in, but the month-long time limit is stressful. The lessons on this site are based on videos (usually) and follow-up quizzes. There are placement tests that are supposed to show you what you already know, but you can’t skip lessons. You have to pass each quiz before it lets you take the final exam. One benefit of these ACE credits is that you get to take the final exam at home! It is proctored online.

There is another option with Study.com. They have CLEP prep materials. You then take the test elsewhere when you are done. This is much cheaper. We have an Easy Peasy discount for just the first three months, so cancel after that and sign up again! Our coupon code is All-In-One-Homeschool. It’s good on the CLEP and DSST membership of $60 a month and is good for 20% off (so $48 a month).

The CLEP test itself may cost $85 to take. This is the cheaper option (around $135 for a course). One course of action to consider: at the end of each high school year, buy a membership and focus full time on studying for these tests, using the placement test to just study what you need to and taking the tests for each core high school course you took, hopefully taking all the tests within a month or two. This would involve cramming, but would be the cheapest course of action. Each summer you could pay around $450 total for 12 college credits.

ONE BIG “HOWEVER”: you can get CLEP practice tests free online and study on your own. There is a CLEP link on most courses to where you can learn what’s on the test. Study.com would teach you to the test and the quizzes would show you know the material.

*Study.com gave my child a free course to try.

I will say that this is good for quickly getting credit for something you feel familiar with already. I don’t think it’s a good place to actually learn something.

 

We will be running this leadership program through our own site in March and again in June. I want to make sure everyone has access to this opportunity, so I’ve licensed the materials for EP to use. Students will be partnering with a local business (where you are) in order to raise money for a non-profit. Learn more and register to be part of one of our groups.