How To Find A CLEP Testing Center Near You

In this post I’m going to walk you through the step by step process you can use to find a CLEP testing center near where you live.  There are a couple of strategies you can use:

  • Use google or another search engine to search for “CLEP testing center + State you live in”
  • Using the CollegeBoard website
  • Visiting the websites of colleges in your local area

Most likely in order to get a fast and accurate idea of what colleges offer CLEP testing you’re going to have to use a combination of the three.

My personal choice is to go to the college board website first at:

http://clep.collegeboard.org/search/test-centers

 

Here you find a search box that looks like this:

Screen shot of the CollegeBoard website showing the test center search page

My personal preference is to use the zip code.  In this walk through I’m going to be searching for a test center in San Diego, California so I’m just going to search using city in state.

After you do your search you should get a screen similar to the one that is shown below:

 Screenshot of the CollegeBoard's test center search result page for San Diego.

 

Now you may have noticed that there is a Test Center Availability column that has the words “Open”, “Limited”, and “On Base”.

Your best bet is to go with the test centers that have the Availiability of “Open”.  Two exceptions to this rule are if you are active duty military or you are currently attending the university that has an availability of “limited”.

For the on base test centers you need to have base access and that’s hard to come by if you’re not in the military.  As far as the “limited” availability goes some college test centers will only allow students attending their college to test at that location.

Now this about the extent of the CollegeBoard’s search tool’s usefulness.  Now let’s say I wanted to find out more about Brandman University – San Diego CLEP test centers.

I would click on the name of the school which is in blue.  That would take me to the screen shown below which always cracks me up because I have yet to see the website of a college listed.  If you find a college that has their website listed please let me know because I’d love to see it.

A screen capture of the CollegeBoard website search function showing the contact info a college in San Diego

 

Now you have two options:  call the test center directly and ask about their testing schedule or search for their website to find out some info ahead of time.

Me being the anti-social person that I am, I like to find the website and find out more information before calling… 😛

At this point I do a search on Google for “Brandman University San Diego + CLEP”.  Below is the result page I got and I decided to click on the first link since it looked like the one I was looking for.

Google result page for showing Brandman university clep information

 

****Note*** I did receive a warning from Google Chrome saying that this page might not be the page I was looking for but I decided to ignore it anyways.

In this particular instance I didn’t quite get the information I was looking for.  I got their CLEP Equivalency page, or in other words what credit they grant their students for passing the CLEP exams with the ACE recommended minimum score.

Screenshot showing Brandman University's CLEP Equivalency chart

As you can see there is no information regarding a test center for taking the CLEP.  Even though we didn’t find information about their CLEP testing center we did find their website.

At this point we can do two things:  do another search on google using a better search query such as “Brandman University San Diego + CLEP testing” or just use the University’s website to search for “CLEP testing’

Now I went ahead and tried both of those options and with multiple variations such as “CLEP testing”, “CLEP test center”, “testing” and I wasn’t able to find any information on it.

I must say that I was pretty shocked to not find any information on their testing center.  This is good though.  I get to show you what happens when I don’t find the information I’m looking for.  And no it doesn’t involve tossing my computer out the window… 😛

What this means is they either don’t have CLEP testing any more, they just don’t list that information on their website, or they have a horribly designed website that’s hard to find information on.

Regardless of which case it is, at this point I would pick up the phone and call them and ask them if they have a CLEP test center that administers CLEP tests.

You’re probably thinking that I should have done that in the first place.  Yes you’re right, but I’m a guy and I like doing things the hard way.  Kind of like that whole “not asking for directions” thing…

If they offer CLEP testing then you will want to ask some questions:

  • Their testing schedule
  • How to register
  • What form of payment they accept for the CLEP
  • Where their test center is located

If they don’t offer CLEP testing anymore then you just repeat the process with another college, until you find another one that does.

I repeated the same process for San Diego State University.  I searched google for “San Diego State University + CLEP testing”.  The first result seemed to be the most relevant which took me to their testing center website.

Their testing center website had a link to their 2012-2013 CLEP testing schedule, which you can look at here(pdf file).

As you can see it can be a little hard to find a CLEP testing center near you.  If you strike out the first time, keep with it and eventually you will find one.

Happy testing!  🙂

 

Looking for a CLEP study resource?  You may want to consider Instantcert

2 comments… add one
  • Denise May 31, 2013 @ 8:42

    I came across your blog and have read through the last couple of posts. I am a CLEP test center administrator and wanted to address your frustration with the CLEP website not listing the test center’s website. Just so you know, this information is provided to CLEP, but they choose to not display it (for whatever reason). It frustrates me to no end when I get callers who are asking me questions that could have been answered if they had visited out test center web page. I am glad to read that you make every attempt to find out information using google and the university’s name beforehand. From what I have determined, you (and I) are a rare breed! People just want to call and be told the information.

    Oh, and the reason that Brandman University’s website doesn’t have any mention of being a CLEP test center is because that one website represents many different locations of Brandman. Not all of them have a test center. Yes, it is a horrible website and could be made much better for those who are computer literate.

    Good news to share and I appreciate that you are taking the time to do so!

  • Thomas Jun 2, 2013 @ 21:07

    Hi Denise,

    That is very interesting to find out that CLEP doesn’t post that information even though they are given it. You would think that people studying for a CLEP test would be more proactive in pursuing information about CLEP testing since studying for a CLEP test involves a lot of study on your own. Thank you for posting.

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