I have recently gone back to school full time, (yay!) but I’d like to get the degree sooner than later. I’ve been thinking about the CLEP tests, my school administers them for about 20 sheckles, plus the 50 for the test.
How are they for clearing out lower tier classes? Are they multiple choice? Any essay questions?
How easy is it to get study guides from, say, the library or online?
And most importantly, what is the degree of difficulty? I test pretty well, so I think I might be able to get through the humanities, literature, and maybe some english/grammar without spending five weeks in a class.
My school recommended the website www.instancert.com and I went there and they made it sound really easy to study for the tests and pass them. I joined the website and then promptly forgot about it, until I noticed the $20 monthly charge on my credit card many months later. The site did seem really useful but I never actually buckled down to study and I never actually took any of the CLEP exams. If you join the site though, you can see exactly how hard the tests will be and which subjects you would probably do well on.
I completed great big gobs of my required coursework this way, & it’s really easy, if you are familiar with the topic.
If you got an “A” or a “B” on a course in your Junior or Senior year in High School, or if it is a hobby/intrest, you can walk all over it.
But be certain to get all the post-test paperwork done, if you want it to count toward required courses. My graduation got delayed a semester because nobody cared enough to mention that there were extra forms. :smack:
CLEP saved my hide my last semester in university. My school told me that I had 80 hours transferred from another school. I pegged out my last 48 hours and went merrily studying along. In may last semester, I chanced by the office that takes care of degrees and found that I was 9-12 hours lacking (I can’t remember which.) The good institution transferred the 80 hours, but did not apply them towards my degree! :rolleyes:
I had already told my family that I was graduating in May, and I was quite well fed up with sitting in classes with a bunch of dorks and professors that hated me for being old and fat, so I was desperate. I checked on the CLEP business, and it looked good. I knocked them off and was able to graduate on time.
I found that I should have done this stuff years earlier-it was easy and quick. In a couple of weeks, I knocked off a semester’s worth of work. Of course, the stuff tested on was social science-criminology, psychology, history, etc, not math or physics.
Most, if not all are are multiple choice.
You can get the outline for what is needed for the test online (e.g., Economics Test: 1. 20% Supply and Demand 2. 35% Banking and Money 3. 15% GNP and Government Fiscal Policy 4. 30% Inflation and Monetary Policy *[I just made up these, but that’s how it is laid out, MOL,] * or from the test center. This should give you an idea of what’s needed for the test.I would recommend just getting a text book from the school library or a used book store and studying it, or one of the CLEP test study guides (I think they are 10-20 dollars from CLEP online.) They have a bunch of sample questions, which are very helpful.
It seemed like the guess-work on the tests was easier. I had a weak-fair grasp of Euro-History, and I got a pretty fair grade. The tests are pass-fail, so you cannot get hurt GPA wise, and 70 clams is pretty good for 3 hours credit.
I cannot stress too much how I benefited by taking the CLEP tests. This was one semester of grief that I was spared, and had I known how liberating an experience it was, I would have done it much sooner and with many more classes.