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How to get your GED at home or online

The bad news: You can't actually take the GED test at home or online. You have to physically attend a testing center to take the test there.

The good news: You can prepare yourself for the test at home, and take practice tests online, so that when the time comes to take the real test, you can be completely sure that you'll pass.

Do as much research as you can about how the GED stuff works in your area before you talk to your parents about dropping out. This way you'll have a response for every worst case scenario that they can think of, and it will also show that you're serious about it.

You need to find out:

• What the requirements are for a GED in your state
• Where the testing center is
• How much it costs to take the test (yes, it isn't free)
• How you're going to pay for it (if your parents are unlikely to help)
• What subjects the test covers and what you need to know for each one (taking some practice tests should help with this, as well as finding some online study guides)

Requirements for taking a GED test:
In order to take a GED test, you must not currently be enrolled in a high school, and you must not have graduated from one either. You also have to be a certain age. This age differs depending on what state you're in, it could be anywhere between 16 and 18. Depending on your state, there may be other requirements too, like how long you've been out of school, and how long you've been a resident of your current state. You'll have to look that up yourself because it differs from state to state.

What can you do with a GED?

Short answer: Everything you can do with a normal high school diploma. You can get into just about any college, and apply for just about any job. There are a small minority of people (3-5%) that are nitpicky about a GED, but most people regard it as equivalent to a regular diploma.

If you can take your GED test early (at 16 or 17), you can even get a head start on most people your age by getting into college early, or getting a job early. This might be something useful to tell your parents if your state will allow you to do it at an earlier age than 18.

GED vs High School Diploma

A lot of people are under the impression that a GED is somehow inferior to a high school diploma, as if a normal diploma proves that you're more responsible, or that you're smarter or something. Let's think about that for a minute.

Someone who graduates high school normally and gets a normal diploma:

• Attended school for probably about 12 years of their life.
• Either fitted in with the other students, or managed to avoid them well enough to survive.
• Managed to stay on teachers' good sides enough to pass.
• More or less fits the mould of 'normal student' that public high schools generally cater to.

Someone who graduates high school with very high grades has also:

• Spent way too much time doing homework or studying and probably has no life. (or cheated their way through the tests)
• Can handle being incredibly bored for long periods of time and still continue doing the boring stuff.

What does this prove? I guess it proves that people who finish high school normally are more likely to be obedient to authority, and do as they're told, and not think outside the box too much. So in that sense, I suppose some employers would be more interested in hiring them if they were looking for expendable sheep to work for them. But who in their right mind would want to work for someone with priorities like that? Exactly - if the person you're interested in working for is more interested in whether or not you have a normal diploma than what you're actually capable of, I'd say they're not worth your time anyway.

Posted in: Resources on August 21, 2006 @ 7:44 PM

Tags: Alternatives, GED, School

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