I was recently on a website where someone posted in a comments' section that you can only retake a CLEP test one time and if you fail it again, that's it. You can never take it again.
This is NOT true.
Here's the 411 about retakes:
Different colleges/universities have different policies. For instance the University of Oklahoma states you can only take a CLEP once. However, the College Board does not limit the number of times you can take any of their CLEP exams. There is a 6-month waiting period between retakes, but nothing prevents you from taking it multiple times.
When you take a CLEP, you can enter a school code, if you know where you want the scores to go. This makes sense if you are already enrolled at a certain school. You do not have to enter a code, though. The College Board will hold your scores for up to 20 years, and you can request a transcript to be sent at any time. Additionally, if you are enrolled in a college or university, you can decide right at the time of the test (once you see your score) not to send a failing score on to your school.
Your CLEP transcript only contains passing scores and does not state how many times you took a certain exam.
What it amounts to is an ethical decision on your part. If you take a number of CLEPs before choosing/enrolling in a certain school, and you fail and retake a test several times before passing, then learn your school has a no-retake policy, it would be up to you whether or not to send the passing scores of those tests you retook. The school will not know how many times you took the test.
To be clear: Yes, I have confirmed all this information directly with the College Board. I can't seem to find the comment I saw last week, and unfortunately I didn't bookmark the page. If you come across it (or any blog post/forum post) that states the same misinformation, please feel free to send people to this blog post for clarification.
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