Mariano Picolomini
If students are looking to earn credit without going to class, they can register at the Admissions and Records Office for the Credit-by-Exam petition before the Friday due date.
Students who submit an application for the exam will receive a notification of whether or not they are eligible within 10 days of applying.
Eligibility requirements include a cumulative GPA of 2.0 and at least 12 units completed in the Los Angeles Community College District. The exam cannot be taken for a class that the student has already taken and earned a grade in, or for a class they are currently enrolled in.
The exam does not eliminate the regular fee for classes, so students will still have to pay $20 for every unit the exam counts for.
The credits earned with the exam do not count toward the “full-time” student status.
Deborah Lopez, senior supervisor of Admissions and Records, said, “What that means is that if the student is applying for benefits such as health care for being a full-time student, those credits would not count towards that.”
Students should make sure which classes the exam is taken for, because four-year universities do not accept every unit the student has earned. Universities accept a limited amount of credit from a community college, so students should keep track of how many credits they have before taking the exam.
A student can not earn more than 15 credits with the exam.
There are only 17 classes available for the exam, including Physical Science 1 and English 101. The full schedule of classes is available on pages 22-23 or page 112 in the print version of the Fall 2008 Schedule of Classes catalog.
If the exam is successfully completed, the student will receive a “CR” instead of a letter grade on their record. If the exam is failed, a “NCR” – for no credit – will show up instead.
The exam will help students who do not have time to take a class for an entire semester, allowing them to earn course credit in a matter of hours.
Former Pierce student Christine Cao said the exam “would have saved me a lot of time and I would have transferred earlier than I did.”
Less than 1 percent of students take the exam per semester, probably because only few classes have the exam available and not many students know about the exam.
Pierce student Arcinio White said, “I knew in my high school there was a test to get a diploma without taking classes, but I didn’t know (college) still did that.”
The Admissions and Records Office can be reached at 818-719-6404.
A list of the courses eligible for credit-by-exam. ()