General Educational Development (GED) test has been offering post secondary education opportunities for school dropouts and everyone who is not able to achieve high school education because of one or the other reason. Most of the individuals prefer to advance their education after gaining ‘Certificate of General Educational Development’ while many endeavor to get better job. Despite of wide acceptability of this test, it is normally much easier to get enrolled in a two year community college than in four year colleges and universities after gaining GED. Thereafter, one can pursue higher undergraduate education by continuing to a four year college from a community college.
Checks before registration-
The applicant must make few checks before registering a date for the test. The very first thing is evaluation of eligibility for this test. One must be at least 16 years of age and a school dropout according to the rules of GED testing service. Any individual who is 17 years of age or above and discontinued his/her education for at least a year can register for this exam. The candidate should also assess whether he/she possesses high school level academic skills required to pass this exam or not.
A test date should be chosen considering the time needed to prepare for this exam. Generally, it requires two to three months of study before taking the test. The time necessary for GED preparation is more or less dependent on the individual himself. Hence, one should first get familiarized with content of the tests and accordingly estimate the period for test preparation.
Another important consideration is choosing those spare date(s) when the individual have no liability of job or anything else. In case, an individual is not able to take the test on given dates, he/she can get cancelled the test date(s) by informing concerned authorities two days prior.
Registration Process-
The registration for GED test can be done at one of the official registration centers. The registration is done on fixed days and time of a week. There are about 3400 testing centers throughout United States. The testing center nearest to one’s residence should be selected. If an applicant is residing outside USA, then he/she should contact the regional office of education.
When the individual goes to register for test, he is asked to take a pretest. In some states, a pretest of mathematics is mandatory in addition to test of any one subject of the candidate’s choice. A pretest is taken to verify ability of the candidate to appear in exam.
Then, one has to fill up a registration form and attach a proof of residence and identity with it. The driving license, birth certificate, passport, any identification card issued by American government etc can serve as the required proof. The documents validating discontinuation of school education should also be attached. The form has to be submitted at testing center for evaluation. A test date(s) can be chosen from the available dates. Alternative date(s) are also required to be mentioned in the enrollment form.
The testing center nearest to one’s residence can be found at the official website of American Council of Education (ACE) by entering postal code at http://www2.acenet.edu/resources/ged/center_locator.cfm. The contact information about testing centers are also available in the local telephone listings.
Remember that this test can not be taken online. Those websites which claim to offer online GED test are fraudulent.