American Council on Education

Overview

The American Council on Education (ACE) is a United States organization, established in 1918, comprising over 1,800 accredited, degree-granting colleges and universities and higher education-related associations, organizations, and corporations.

Source: Wikipedia

ACE reviews courses (and other "non-course" things like ALEKS) and makes a recommendation as to whether or not the course should be accepted by a school for credit. It is vitally important you understand that ACE only makes recommendations, not requirements. A common misconception is "Because it is ACE approved my school must accept it." This is completely untrue. Each school establishes its own policies and is free to reject any course for any reason, regardless of the course's particular merit.

ACE provides a handy search engine to help you determine if a course is ACE recommended. ACE also provides a transcript service that can be used to collect your various "alternative credits" together in one location for transfer to your chosen school. Simply register through the ACE website, identify courses you have completed, and ACE will verify completion with the course provider(s). Once your transcript is created, simply order your ACE transcript and have it sent to your school of choice for an initial evaluation.

As a side note, ACE also administers the GED tests used for high school diploma equivalency.

All of the Big 3 schools accept ACE-recommended courses, however COSC only accepts ACE credits that come from partner institutions.

Transcription

As of November 2020, ACE switched to using the Credly/Acclaim system for sending transcripts to universities and colleges. In April of 2021, Acclaim/Credly dropped the "Acclaim" name and redirected all traffic to the Credly domain. The entire system and process should be identical except on a new domain. In order to get credit for your ACE-recommended courses, you need to create an account on Credly. Once you have an account, getting courses added to your transcript will be a slightly different process depending on the institution that you're using.

• Ordering Credly Transcripts
• ALEKS Credly Process
• CSM Learn Credly Process
• Sophia.org Credly Process
• StraighterLine Credly Process
• Study.com Credly Process

These credit resources are defunct, but Credly badges can still be claimed by students who received credits while they were active:

• Kaplan
• National Fire Academy (NETC/FEMA)

Resources

• Wikipedia article on ACE
• ACE main home page (not very useful for what we need)
• ACE National Guide search engine of ACE-recommended courses (see Find a Course or Exam at the top, or browse at the bottom)
• New ACE transcript system (Credly)
• Information regarding old ACE transcript system