How do I find my CLEP/DSST College Code?
Transcript Below
Hey everyone, Justin from Free Clep Prep here answering more questions that you've sent into the website.
Today's question is from Brett who asks, "This maybe a dumb question, but when I go to take my exam, it asks me for my school's testing code. How do I find this code?" Well, first of all Bret that's definitely not a dumb question. We get asked that a lot so don't feel bad.
For those of you that don't know what Bret's asking about, whenever you sit down and take your exam for the first time whether it would be a CLEP or a DSST, they'll ask you for your school's testing code, or college code, or something along those lines. It's asking for like a 4 to 5 digit number. All this number is the one that Prometric or College Board gives to your specific school, so they know who to send the results to. So after you get done with your test, they'll take that number and file it off to the school that matches that.
So first of all, you can always call your school to ask them what is the testing code or college code. Just make sure to know whether or not you're taking a CLEP or a DSST because it's going to be different for each one. So the college code for College Board for example, is going to be different than the college code for Prometric. So keep that in mind.
The other way to do is actually with handy tool that both College Board and Prometric give you to use. That's what we're going to talk about right now. *See Slide* So here we are at the homepage of Free Clep Prep. You're going to go up to tools and resources, and then scroll down to CLEP and DSST official resources. This takes you to the official resources and tools page.
What I've done here is gathered all of College Board and Prometric's official tools. There's a lot of great information on this page. I highly suggest that after this you come and poke around on here and see what you can find because chances are you'll find something that applies to you.
So getting back onto our tutorial, we have a List of CLEP Exams. We have ACE Recommended Passing Scores. For our use here we have the List of Colleges That Accept CLEP Credit. So let's go and click on that.
I do apologize for the PowerPoint presentation instead of the actual screen captures. I had a great screen capture walk you through whole process. It was edited, everything awesome. Then I couldn't get permission from Prometric, and College Board to have it on YouTube, because their websites are copyrighted.
So 3 hours of being on hold I got told, "Sorry we can't help you." So in return you get PowerPoint. I do apologize for that. However, if you go ahead and click on that link you should be able to follow along these things. I've tried to make them as close as possible. So hopefully it won't confuse anybody.
Let's get to it; first of all if you click on that link you're going to find something that looks very similar. They have a United States tab, and they have an international tab. International tab is going to be useful for those folks that are overseas. Then they have a college name tab which is already selected. This is where you enter the college name itself. Now this auto-populates the results. So if you enter, let's say you're looking for Excelsior I can enter EX and it would go ahead and show me the rest of the Excelsior. So it's handy if you're not really familiar with how to spell the college's name that you're after.
Now once you have that, you go ahead and pick the imaginary start button. Now yours is going to be real, mine's imaginary. It should come to this screen. This is the results page, very similar to what you're going to see. It has the college name up here. It has the address. It has the phone number. Then it has the college code. The college code is what we're looking for here. This is the number that whenever you sit down at the test, if it doesn't automatically fill that number in whenever you select your school, this is where you find it.
One thing that I really wish could show you College Board's actual website, is they have a very neat thing down here below. You're probably looking at it right now, if you're following along. It's a complete list of every CLEP that whatever school you're looking up, in this case random college name 01. It will have a complete list of all CLEPs that the school accepts along with the score, and the amount of credits that it awards for a successful pass. So it might have the America Government 56, 3 credits. The 56 is going to be the score that this particular school accepts. I really like that. It's a neat little feature that College Board has that Prometric doesn't. Now one thing about this tool just like the Prometric tool, the databases are only as accurate as when they update them. They don't update them all that often.
So if you're looking for a particular school like whenever I was doing the research for this Q&A Session, I try to look up Tulane University. It didn't have anything in College Board's database. If I was going to Tulane I might think that Tulane doesn't accept CLEP credits, but I was able to go to the actual Tulane website and they have a whole page on CLEP and DSST credits, which ones they accept and what the score needs to be. So it just goes to show that if you're looking up a college and they don't have it in here. Don't automatically assume that your college doesn't accept credits or CLEP credits. Chances are they might but you just need to go ahead and call the college or go on their website in order to make sure of that.
That's the College Board fake tool that I'm showing you here. Hopefully you're looking at the real one. Let's go ahead and look at my fake Prometric official tool. We're back on the official resources and tools page. You're going to scroll down just a little bit further to the DSST official resources and tools. The link that you're looking for is right here. The DSST Find a School and Testing Center Tool. So go ahead and click on that link.
Now when you click on the link on Free Clep Prep it will take you to something that looks very similar to this. I've called mine the Double Duty Tool because just like Prometric's official tool, it finds us both testing centers and colleges. Now for this we're actually looking for the college code. So we're only concentrating on this part, but if you ever need the testing center keep that in mind that this is the tool that you also use to find those.
Now this is where you enter in the actual school name. So I'm going to go ahead and enter in "best school ever." Directly underneath that is you're going to have 3 boxes. Now just like on the official Prometric website, these 3 are already checked. But I don't need all 3 and neither do you in order to find the college code. We don't need testing centers.
So we're going to go ahead and, let me see if I can do this right, get rid of that check mark and get rid of this one too for DANTES funded testing center's, we're just concerned with the colleges. So after you have your school name, you have this first box checked, then you hit on the start button. I'm going to click my imaginary start button and see what happens.
Once you hit your search button, it should come up with something just like this. You'll have search results at your location. You'll have the college name. This number right here is what we need. This is the college code for Prometric. So any time you sit down to take an exam, they ask you for this and it doesn't automatically appear with your college name. This is the number that you're going to need in order to enter in right there. Then it also has the address. It has the phone number for the college. It has a website link which usually takes you to the main website. But sometimes you get lucky and it takes you directly to the page where they talk about CLEP and DSSTs. Then on the right hand side you have details about the actual college itself. You can find out if it gives DSST exams, if it has a testing center on the campus. What days they're open and whether or not if it accepts credits for DSST exams.
Now Prometric does not have that handy tool at the bottom that College Board has where it shows what exams the college accepts, what score you need and what credits they give. However, I will say this about the Prometric tool. These databases are only as good as when people update them. As far as I've been able to tell Prometric updates theirs is a little bit faster than College Board. So that Tulane example I used earlier, I couldn't find Tulane in the College Board when I was doing research for this Q&A. However, I did look on Prometric and they had Tulane no problems. So keep that in mind.
There we go, you now know how to use the automated tools for both College Board and Prometric to find your college code. Remember what I said earlier, you can always call your school and ask them for the code. But if you do so, make sure you tell them I'm either taking a CLEP or I'm taking a DSST as the codes are going to be different for both.
So Bret I hope that answered your question. Anybody else out there, if you have a question about this topic or any others, you can either comment below or go to Free Clep Prep and use the contact me form to write me an email. I appreciate the time. Thanks for watching and best of luck on all of your exams. I'll see you next time.
-Justin
