Extra credits p1 - Military - Education Strategies and Tips - Military Times EDGE

Call it academic sticker shock. The average cost of a year at a private four-year college was $25,143 in 2008-2009. A year at a public college averaged $6,585, according to the College Board.

But those are just the averages. The savvy student can whittle down costs — and finish college a lot faster — by picking up credits for military service, academic achievement and high exam scores.

Transfer credits can help students skip required coursework, and colleges can be surprisingly flexible in what kinds of credit they accept. There’s a skill to winning the most possible credit for your experiences. Here’s what the experts have to say about getting all the credit you deserve.

CLEP

A speedy route to college credits is the College Board’s College Level Examination Program (CLEP), a catalog of 34 tests on general and specific topics recognized by some 2,900 schools.

A test for what would be a one-semester course such as U.S. history typically earns three credits, two-semester courses get six credits, and languages are good for six to 12 credits, though each school sets it own policy.

Many bases have college test centers where military personnel can take the tests for free. The best scores go to those who use resources offered by the College Board, said Ariel Foster, executive director of the CLEP program. This summer, the organization added links to free online study tools to its Web site, www.collegeboard.com.

“We have highlighted the best of the free resources that are available on the Web to help someone prepare for the exam,” Foster said.

Programs such as MIT OpenCourseWare and the Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Mellon University deliver learning materials and instruction in multimedia presentations including podcasts and RSS feeds — perfect for military personnel who need to prep for exams while on the move.

Sometimes service members can skip the coursework and go right to the exam if their training coincides with the test materials. “We know of people who have been stationed in Germany and may have learned German independently. CLEP is a great opportunity to get credit for that knowledge,” Foster said.

Transfer credits

In transferring academic credits, students can make the most of their achievements by contacting administrators as the process unfolds to make sure they understand what you are bringing to the table.

Army National Guard Sgt. 1st Class Mike Kent has been on both sides of the conversation. He earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass., bringing with him a host of academic credits. Now he is the school’s military liaison, helping service members get the most bang from their previous classroom studies.

Kent played hardball to get his credits accepted. “They didn’t have to take some of those, since the credits were at least 10 years old. But I was fairly firm — these were clearly legitimate — and they chose to be fairly accommodating,” he said.

“Instead of just handing them the transcript and having them say no, I asked them for justification. Why are you accepting these credits and not these? A lot of people hear the word ‘no’ and they walk away.”

One way to change the game is to negotiate. “Since most colleges will waive the application fee, you can apply to lots of different schools and see if one is willing to accept those transfer credits,” Kent said. “If one school is willing, then you can take that interest and show it to the school you really want to go to, and they may be willing to match that.”

Even within a single institution, different coursework may be counted differently.

“There is always a core curriculum and there are always electives, and the electives are typically not as stringent,” said Joseph Cothron, deputy director of Army continuing education services and chief of the Army Continuing Education Services branch.

“So if you find a credit does not transfer toward your major, that credit is not lost or wasted. You still can use it toward an elective. If this degree requires 136 semester hours to graduate, maybe only 72 hours of that are required subjects.”

Military service credits

Colleges don’t look just to academic transcripts in granting course credits. Military training, occupational specialty and service experience all may be credit-worthy.

The American Council on Education assigns recommended credit values to various forms of military experience, and many schools will follow these guidelines.

In addition to your academic history, it helps to send along a professional résumé spelling out in more detail your military duties. Suppose, for example, a business program requires a human-resources management course, and you’ve done active duty in the personnel office.

“That’s where you can start negotiating, even though it may not be on an official transcript anywhere,” Kent said.

“The college has the wiggle room to give you those credits, but you have to provide some type of supporting documentation, even if it is a statement from your commander explaining what your specific duties were for that unit.”

It helps, too, if a student can demonstrate his or her special value to the school.

“When a management course is looking at a unique management challenge, and I can talk about moving troops around while under fire, that is going to be a completely different perspective for most of the people in that room,” Kent said.

Find the courses that count, make use of online resources, and bring life experiences to the table. It takes a bit of finesse to make tuition fees manageable. Put it all together, though, and it is possible to accumulate credits and take the sting out of the cost of a college degree.