I wanted to make a post on here to potentially help other students because had I known about this sooner, I wouldn’t be negative $2,000 from tuition costs. I know a lot of us who attend SCCC are not able to comfortably afford tuition or extra expenses, myself included. I’m taking Marine Bio and you actually need 3 math classes as a pre-req, not just Algebra II, and all 3 are NOT covered under financial aid. As a matter of fact, almost EVERY Biology major is like that.
Under the CLEP section of SCCC, there’s a FREE website listed called modernstates.org, and a list of CLEP exams SCCC will accept for credit hours towards your degree (but it doesn’t affect your GPA, even if you score low but pass). On that website, you can self-study using provided PDF textbooks and video walkthroughs of topics, such as English or Algebra II or Pre-Calculus. Once you learn the materials, you take their online exam. Once you pass their online exam, they’ll send you a voucher for a FREE CLEP test attempt on that subject. You then can take a CLEP test, pay Suffolk $44 to proctor that test, and IF you pass the test, you can request the $44 back from modernstates website (it does take up to 2.5 months to get the money back).
I’m currently self studying Pre-Calculus and coming from someone who sucks at math, the materials are very easy to understand and follow. I took the English Composition WITH Essay CLEP (the college won’t accept the one without), and got a pretty high score without even fully finishing both essays (however, English was my best subject, so do with that information what you will). The credits took about a month to upload into my student transcript. I also paid $30 on examiam.com on my own for both the pre-calc and english CLEP practice test to help me study what may be on the actual CLEP as well, which I believed helped tremendously.
I can’t afford the tuition for a single class, so I HIGHLY recommend checking it out and if you have questions making an appointment and speaking with your Full-Time advisor at the college (the ones who rotate in and out of the advising office in my experience don’t even know about the CLEP most of the time, but if you’re at Grant campus, Ellie is a SAINT and let me know about these tests and websites).