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Comment by Uptrenda | Hacker News Reader

I read something ages back about a lesser known process called 'testing out' where you are basically able to just do the exams at universities to get a degree. It's suppose to encourage life-long learning and its based on the assumption that many professionals and adults accrue relevant experience outside of academia. I had always wanted to look more into this myself but it seemed to require too much bureaucracy. OPs university sounds like it might be an actual working alternative to this. I find this fascinating and wonder what other degrees might be possible

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As a full time working adult, WGU was _amazing_ for getting a degree, at my own pace. Which was a lot faster than a standard brick and mortar school. You can see the course catalog here [0]. My work paid tuition for my degree, but they had an upper limit on reimbursement. WGU was what I found that they approved, and came in under cost (I didn't want to pay out of pocket).

I really do recommend WGU for experienced professionals, and self-guided and motivated learners. I would not suggest it for a brand new high schooler, or people who have no experience in the industry they're trying to get a degree in.

[0]https://www.wgu.edu/about/institutional-catalog.html

Testing out of a course used to generally be available for freshman level courses but rarely for anything more advanced than that. (The exception might be that one could generally test out of up to a year of calculus since some people don't consider calculus a freshman course - e.g., business majors, etc.) It was a cheaper option at some universities than the AP exams were for students that had taken AP courses, although AP courses were not required to test out of a course. The testing out option enabled high school students that had taken advanced courses to start university more in-line with their backgrounds rather than having to repeat courses for no reason.

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Edit: that was decades ago - don't forgo an AP exam thinking you can test out unless you already have admission and have verified the availability and costs of testing out of a course.

Reputable colleges won't give you credit for that, beyond skipping first year prerequisites. But you can get "a degree" for employers like government that pay based a formula based on credentials.

If they did, they'd get the reputation for leaving money on the table. Notgonnahappen.

Sort of. CLEP tests go over much of your core curriculum, but not major specific stuff. So really more like two years worth of material, maximally. And while some top tier universities won't credit that, they -will- credit transfer credit from colleges that DO accept CLEP credit. Takes a bit of work to figure it all out, but you can end up going to top tier universities with two years of college credit if you do it just right.

But yeah, per OP, you can't get a degree with it.

My understanding of “testing out” is that it generally refers to standardized things like CLEP where there are only a handful of subjects you can test out in, typically prerequisite academics.

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