High School Testing for Homeschoolers

The info here started as part of my Homeschooling High School page. However, as I help my kids navigate and learn more about college entrance exams and credit-by-exam tests, well, It didn’t take long for this to become a whole page of its own! I hope this helps shorten your learning curve!

I say this many times on this page and the Homeschooling High School page: research the colleges/universities you’re interested in! The requirements vary so much from place to place! Many places also have specific instructions for homeschoolers, so search for that (for example, here’s UofA’s Homeschool page).

When to Test?

The first question you should ask is when do you need to start thinking about all this? Generally, I suggest you start working on this the summer before your student’s Junior year of High school. But let’s look at the dates for each

I have a lot more to say about each of these below, but most students take:

PSAT or CLT 10 in the fall of their Junior year
SAT, ACT, and/or CLT the Spring of their Junior year or summer after their Junior year
CLEP tests can be taken anytime by students over 13 years old. However, most students don’t start working on the classes that would correspond to a CLEP test until the Junior, maybe Sophomore year of high school.
AP tests are taken at the end of an AP course.

*Register at least 3-5 weeks beforehand, depending on the test. Some testing locations fill up and you need to register earlier!

Testing a little early allows students to retake any test they think they can score higher on. Check with the colleges your student is interested in to see which tests make the most sense. Many colleges don’t require them but base many scholarships on them!

HSLDA is also a great resource: HSLDA: The Alphabet Soup of High School Testing

College Entrance Exams

There are 3 main exams people take prior to applying for college/university: SAT, ACT, and CLT. It used to be that colleges required one specific test, but most places now accept both/either the SAT and ACT. More and more colleges are starting to accept the CLT as well, since it’s a newer test.

PLEASE research the schools you are interested in and see what tests they require or suggest!

Do I need to take any of these tests?

During COVID, many colleges made entrance exams optional, so do you need to take them? I think so, for these reasons:

Many colleges are starting to go back to requiring them. Rather than being in a bind when the college of your choice changes its mind, I suggest you go ahead and take at least one of these college entrance exams now.
Many scholarships are based on entrance exam scores.
Many schools allow entrance exams to count as placement exams, meaning you won’t need to take a math or writing placement exam before starting college, assuming you score high enough on the entrance exam.

Do I need to study for these tests?

Maybe? Many students take the tests without studying specifically for them. However, if you want or need a specific score then some test prep is a good idea. There are numerous free study programs and library books to help students prepare for these test. Start by taking a practice test so you know what sort of studying will do the most good in increasing your score. Also, consider how you learn best.

I don’t know where I get this idea from or if it’s even true, but I get the sense that a good entrance exam score adds a kind of credibility to your homeschool transcript, especially in more subjective situations, like admittance to the Honors program at your local state school. Please let me know if you have any hard data to support or refute this!

The CLT

The Classical Learning Test or CLT is great for classically educated students! Introduced in 2015, it’s still new compared to the SAT and ACT. However, more and more colleges are starting to accept the CLT. It seems to be most popular among smaller schools. For example our large state schools in Arizona: UofA, ASU, and NAU, do not accept the CLT.

The CLT10 is for students who just finished 10th grade and it’s a direct competitor to the PSAT. My older son took the CLT10 and has received a lot of junk mail and email from colleges, but he didn’t score so high that anyone offered him a free ride.

in addition to the main CLT college entrance exam, they also have “diagnostic tests” for grades 3-8. In the past, we had our 8th grader take the CLT8 in May on 8th grade. We thought it was helpful for test practice and general assessment. The report you get back from CLT gives a lot of detail on how the student scored on each type of question. For example, they gave me the actual % of questions he got right in each section so I could see that my son did great on “Grammar- Punctuation and Sentence Structure” and “Algebra- Arithmetic and Operations.” However, he didn’t do as well on “Grammar- Agreement” and “Geometry- Plane Geometry.” Now we know some things to work on for next time!

Classical Conversations has a discount code for CLT, so ask your CC Director or SR about it if you’re part of a CC Community!

The ACT

Most public schools have all their juniors take the American College Test or ACT at school in March of their senior year. So, there aren’t a ton of testing locations for homeschoolers. However, we found one in all of Tucson without too much hassle. The ACT is still mostly a paper-based test. So if you try to register for the digital test, your testing locations will be very limited!

Begin your study process by taking a practice test and then look for the kind of test prep that works best for you

The ACT website has a free, full-length ACT practice test
Most libraries have ACT prep books you can borrow

The SAT

Talking to my friends whose kids are in a traditional school, everyone has to go register for the SAT on their own (unlike the ACT). However, I’m guessing it varies from school to school. To take the test, you’ll create an account at the college board website and then you can register there. Check out all the dates and deadlines there as well.

You’ll take the test at the test center but on your own device (laptop, iPad, etc). Be sure to read all the details and download the app ahead of time!

Begin your study process by taking a practice test and then look for the kind of test prep that works best for you

The College Board has free, full-length SAT practice tests using the same app you’ll use for the test.
I’ve heard great things about Khan Academy’s free SAT prep website.
Most libraries have SAT prep books you can borrow

The PSAT is the “Preliminary SAT.” It is NOT used for college entrance, but it is used for several different scholarships like the National Merit Scholarship Program. The score you need to earn scholarships varies from state to state and from year to year, but you’ll need to be in the 99th percentile.

Let’s Compare the ACT and SAT

Below I have a table, comparing the ACT and SAT. Many people just take one or the other, but some people take them both since different scholarships look at different tests.

FYI- These tests have changed over the years, so you really can’t compare your old scores from 30 years ago to your kids’ scores today.

	ACT	SAT
Score range	1-36	400-1600
Historic Scores (This is my answer to, “what’s a good score?”)	85th percentile: 27 90th percentile: 28-29 95th percentile: 30-31 98th percentile: 33 99th percentile: 34-35	85th percentile: 1290 90th percentile: 1340 95th percentile: 1360 98th percentile: 1470 99th percentile: 1500
Timing	More questions per minute (More time pressure?)	Fewer, but more complex questions per minute (Less time pressure?)
Sections	Math, Reading, English, Science, & optional Essay	Math, Reading, Writing
Math	Includes a wider variety of math topics More geometry & trigonometry Some formulas are provided A calculator is allowed for ALL of math	Includes more advanced math topics Less geometry & trigonometry Formulas are not provided A calculator is allowed for PART of math
Reading	Longer passages, but more direct questions	Shorter passages, but more abstract questions
Writing/English	More questions on grammar rules	More questions on Complex sentence structure and vocabulary
Scoring	Math is 25% of your total score	Math is 50% of your total score

College Credit-By-Exam Tests

If you want to earn college credit in high school, you can try dual enrollment (taking a course at or through a college/university for credit on both your high school and college transcript). However, then you’re at the mercy of a professor who may or may not be any good at teaching and who may or may not be very fair at grading. I’ve heard of many homeschool students doing dual enrollment and ending up with a bad grade through no fault of their own. Now they aren’t eligible for GPA based scholarships! Many scholarships require a 4.0 GPA in high school to earn the scholarship and only require a 3.5 GPA in college to keep the scholarship.

So, if you’re looking at dual enrollment, ask around and find a class with a good teacher! Also be sure to check with whatever college you’re interested in to see if they will accept each dual enrollment credit.

Personally, I’ve become a fan of credit-by-exam tests, where there’s no penalty for doing poorly. The two main types are AP tests and CLEP tests, but CLEP tests work best for homeschool students. Let me explain:

AP Tests

AP tests are taken at the end of an AP class. The class is usually an honors-level / college-level class and the curriculum is designed to mirror the topics on the AP exam. In fact, you can’t legally call it an “AP course” without permission from the College Board, who approves curriculum and administers the tests. Each school with AP courses has an AP coordinator that acts as a liaison with the College Board. Students enroll in the course and take the AP test at their school at the end of the course.

With all that red-tape, we’ve found AP tests to not be very practical for homeschoolers, but CLEP tests….

CLEP Tests

The College Board also administers the College-Level Examination Program or CLEP tests. These are single-subject tests that you can take to earn college credit. They are similar to AP tests, except that AP tests are taken at the end of an AP class, while CLEP tests are taken whenever your student is ready. The minimum age is 13 and there’s no maximum age, so students can continue taking these while in college. I had a friend in college who studied on his own and took these tests each summer instead of taking summer school!

With CLEP tests, you register and pay for the test on the college board website and then you take that registration (digitally) to your local testing site, where you’ll register and pay again. Each testing site (often a local community college or university) has different prices and schedules.

The process is the same for homeschoolers as traditional schoolers, but you can find more info here: CLEP for Homeschool Students

Which CLEP Tests Should You Take?

That all depends on what college or university you’ll attend. Here’s how you look:

Search the College Board website. It will show you which universities will accept CLEP credit. Not all colleges accept CLEP test credit, so this is a very important step!
Then you can search on each university’s website (google the university name and “CLEP”) to see WHAT credit they will give.
- For example, here’s our local university’s page.
Then look at the degree (if you know) your student is planning for and see if they actually need that credit. I talked with an advisor at the university to help me with this one.
- Entering college with a bunch of credits can become a vanity metric if those courses don’t count to your degree or minor…. Of course, if your student has no idea what they want to major in, then I guess you won’t know which credits will help!

You might also want to consider how difficult each test is, so you know how much extra study time your student will need. Have your student take a sample test to gauge how much extra work will be needed. You can also consult this list of how easy or hard each CLEP test is, based on passing rates.

For example, we unknowingly started with the Chemistry CLEP test after completing Apologia’s Chemistry course. It seemed like a very thorough curriculum, but it turns out that Chemistry is the hardest clip test! Oops! Fortunately, he studied hard for a few days and earned 3 credits, so he won’t need any Chemistry in college, based on the degree he’s planning for. He plans to do the Composition CLEP test and one of the History CLEP tests later this summer, both of which appear to have higher passing rates.

Also, check your local university’s policy about using the SAT or ACT to test out of certain classes like composition. One of my son’s friends was a freshman at ASU this year and he scored well enough on ACT/SAT that he wasn’t required to take the standard freshman composition class. He didn’t earn credit, but instead was allowed to take a more interesting class to give him that credit… The more interesting class was also smaller and easier to earn a good grade in than what could have been a “freshman flunk-out class.”

How to Study for A CLEP Test

There are a bunch of courses and help books out there. I suggest you start by finding a practice test. When you look at the results, you should be able to see how much help you need.

For Chemistry, we bought this Chemistry CLEP kindle book, which he read, and then he took the REA practice tests that come with the book. The tests included diagnostics (which subjects do you need to study) and explanations of the answers, which was very helpful. He also asked AI to explain a lot of concepts to him and said that was very helpful! In the future, he says he may just buy the REA practice test package and then use AI to learn what he needs help on…

I’ve heard good things about Modern States, but we haven’t tried them yet.

How to Register for a CLEP Test

Taking a CLEP test is just as open to homeschoolers as public schoolers. You register for the test on the college board website and then register to take the test at one of your local testing centers (often your local community college or university has a testing center)- just search on the college board website for where your testing centers are. You have to be at least 13 years old, but you can continue to take them once you’re a college student (maybe do that in lieu of summer school)

If your student does poorly on a CLEP, there’s no penalty, just the loss of the money you used to pay for the test. (If your student does poorly on dual enrollment, their GPA is ruined and they’ll potentially loose scholarships.)

How About You?

What’s been your experience with college entrance and credit-by-exam tests?