By the Classic Test Prep Team
If you homeschool, and especially if you homeschool in a classical or Great Books tradition, the CLT deserves a serious look as the standardized test of choice. Depending on your state and your broader college list, the CLT can be more than an “alternative” to the ACT and SAT. It’s a legitimate college admissions test that may reward the education you already chose.
What the CLT Is
For readers who have only heard the name in passing: the CLT is a college entrance exam founded in 2015 as an alternative to the SAT and ACT. It consists of 120 questions across three sections: Verbal Reasoning, Grammar/Writing, and Quantitative Reasoning, all of which can be completed in two hours. Scores range from 0 to 120.
One of the greatest advantages the CLT holds over the ACT and SAT is its convenience. The test is administered online on multiple dates throughout the year, and can be taken from home with remote proctoring. That means if you need multiple shots at the test, the CLT will give them to you. And more than 350 colleges (and counting) accept the CLT for admissions. This includes a growing number of state university systems–Texas being the latest–recognize CLT scores.
So why might this test fit homeschoolers in particular?
Why CLT Suits Homeschooled Students
The most obvious difference between the CLT and its competitors is that its passages in the Reading and Grammar/Writing sections are drawn from texts in the classical and Great Books tradition: philosophy, theology, literature, historical documents, etc. A student might encounter Plato, Frederick Douglass, Jane Austen, Blaise Pascal, or the Federalist Papers. CLT publishes an impressive author bank, and it reads like the syllabus of a serious–some might say intimidating–humanities program.
For many test takers, this makes the CLT harder, at least at first glance. You can encounter older prose that is denser, sentences that are longer, and vocabulary that is less familiar. For a student raised on exactly these books, the effect will be much less startling.
This is a real advantage for homeschoolers who have had significant exposure to this kind of literature.
You Can Test at Home
This point can be overlooked. For homeschool families, test logistics are often more burdensome. Registering for the SAT or ACT often means securing a seat at an unfamiliar public high school that may not be nearby, getting there extra early, navigating a check-in process built for students who attend that school, and, for students with accommodations, working through a documentation process that may assume an existing institutional paper trail.
The CLT’s remote proctoring option means students can test in the same environment where they’ve done all of their best work. To use a sports analogy, that’s a real “home field” advantage, especially for the many students with test anxiety and for rural families who would otherwise have to hunt for a testing location. Alternatively, if a student works better outside the house, then the CLT provides in-person test sites as well.
Being Your Own Guidance Counselor
When you homeschool, there is no counseling office. Parents are usually the ones deciding whether a score is good enough, what to remediate, and if/when to retest. The CLT’s score reporting is helpful. Results arrive quickly, and the analytics break performance down by section and question type in a way a teaching parent can act on speedily. Instead of a bare number, you get an answer to the question you actually have: what’s our next move?
The Honest Caveats
If the CLT were the right answer for every homeschooler, this article would be shorter and less useful. The reality is that it won’t be the best option for everyone, and a family deciding on testing strategy needs the limitations stated plainly. And this is where it is nice to have some other options in the ACT and SAT.
Here’s a big caveat: acceptance of the CLT is broad (and growing) but well short of universal. The list of CLT-accepting colleges is heavily weighted toward Christian colleges, classical-friendly liberal arts schools, and several state university networks in states such as Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. That will include some excellent institutions.
As of today, using the CLT as one’s only standardized test will exclude many state flagships, such as Arizona State, UC Berkeley, and Ohio State. No Ivy League schools will accept the CLT either, and many other selective private universities maintain the same policy. So if your student’s list includes a Michigan or Vanderbilt, a CLT score alone will likely not be enough for the application.
You also need to keep an eye on scholarship formulas. Some state scholarship programs and institutional merit grids are written around SAT and ACT scores. Florida’s Bright Futures now incorporates the CLT, but many others do not. Before you commit to a CLT-only strategy, check the actual scholarship requirements at the schools on your list, not just the admissions requirements.
Often, the answer is both-and. Plenty of families use the CLT alongside the SAT or ACT. The preparation overlaps far more than it differs, since strong reading, grammar, and algebra travel across all three tests.
Got a Math Whiz? Give the SAT a Close Look Too
Here’s an important strategy tip: if your student is stronger in STEM subjects and isn’t afraid of math, then you should think carefully about the SAT–at least as the exam to pair with the CLT.
Why? It’s because half of the SAT’s sections are math. For the CLT and ACT, it is only a third. That all means the SAT will reward math skills in a way the other tests won’t. The added benefit is that the SAT is universally accepted, so it may be worth taking a shot or two at both exams.
A simple decision framework for thinking about the CLT:
- If your college list skews toward classical, Christian, and certain state public schools, then the CLT can be your primary test for these schools.
- If your college list is more mixed: prepare for the CLT and one of the other tests (probably the SAT). Your student can then lead with whichever score looks better on each particular application.
- If your college list is dominated by schools that do not accept the CLT, then the SAT or ACT stays primary. The CLT might be worth taking if one or two schools high on the list explicitly reward the CLT (e.g., Liberty University).
Mapping the CLT to Your Curriculum
Let’s think about how a literature-rich homeschool program lines up against the three sections, based on what we see in students who come to us for CLT preparation.
Verbal Reasoning is usually the strength. Students from Great Books backgrounds tend to score well here from the first practice test on. The remaining work is more about technique and mastering format: reading with the clock running, distinguishing between an answer that is true and an answer that is supported by the passage, and handling the comparison questions that pair related texts.
Grammar/Writing might be the sleeper section. Many homeschooled students write well by ear without having to articulate what they are doing. That skill will still be helpful, but the CLT also asks students to make editorial judgments under time pressure: where the comma goes, which transition holds a paragraph together, whether a sentence serves the passage’s purpose. Even if some of those formal grammar rules and methods are rusty, the good news is that Grammar/Writing is probably the most coachable section of the test.
Quantitative Reasoning rewards reasoning over strict, formulaic recall. The CLT math section is also calculator-free, leaning on logic, number sense, and clean algebraic thinking rather than obscure formulas. It also gets gradually more difficult as the section progresses: the easiest questions are up front, the hardest are at the back.
Forty questions in forty-five minutes without a calculator demands fluent mental arithmetic and stamina after the other two sections. Students who have leaned on a calculator since sixth grade or who have practiced their calculator skills for other exams will feel this difference immediately. That means calculator-free practice will have to be introduced early.
A Realistic Timeline
For a family starting from scratch, here is a sane sequence that assumes the CLT matches well with your college list:
Ninth grade: Take the CLT10 once, cold or nearly cold. Treat it as a diagnostic, and let the score report tell you what it will. No prep pressure.
Tenth grade: CLT10 again, this time with modest preparation: a review of grammar conventions and regular no-calculator math practice. Strong tenth-grade CLT10 scores also put students in the running for CLT’s scholarship opportunities.
Eleventh grade: This is the main event. Sit for the first official CLT in fall or winter of junior year, leaving room for one or two retakes. Because the CLT is offered many times a year, you have more scheduling flexibility than the SAT calendar allows. If your college list calls for a conventional test as well, junior spring is the natural slot for it.
Twelfth grade: A final attempt in early fall if the junior-year score left points on the table, in time for application deadlines. Meanwhile, record the testing history cleanly on the homeschool transcript you are building, alongside course descriptions and grades.
If you’re wondering where your student stands today, a single practice test answers more than an hour of speculation. You can find practice exams on the CLT’s website. Or you can look at Classic Test Prep’s free CLT diagnostics, which will give you some direction about next steps and not leave you to guesswork.