I passed U.S. History I CLEP today with a 66 today. Slightly disappointed due the amount of time I studied. Overall, I'm just glad to pass my first CLEP exam.

I started my studying by watching videos 1 to 12 of A Biography of America It's about 5 1/2 hours to watch all videos.

After I was done, I read Sparknotes 101 U.S. History I It took about three days to read the entire book because I work during the day.

Once I was finished, I took my first REA exam and scored 58 (48.33%)

Once I was done, I went back to Sparknotes 101 U.S. History I and read again, then read the REA History of the United States I book
and did the InstantCert several times and took my second test and scored 66 (65.00%)

Once I did the above, I took the Peterson's exam and got 43% and got a panic attack. I followed by doing InstantCert several more times then watch the "A Biography of America" again and took the 2nd Peterson's exam and scored 57% and 3rd Peterson's exam with 52%. Once I did the 3rd Peterson's exam and went over the wrong answers, I took the final REA exam and scored 66 (63.33%)

The test seemed to have more questions about the Antebellum Period than I expected, as well as authors of literature that I didn't even recognized. Luckily, I was able to recognized some of the other authors and use the process of elimination to better guess. lol.

You might want to do some extra reading here Antebellum Period

As for using just InstantCert to pass? That's possible because I did recognize a lot of questions from InstantCert. I would think using Peterson's and InstantCert together if you don't plan on purchasing any books. For me, I thought it was a combination of those two and REA exams and going over the wrong answers. Of course, the books and videos really helped me out on the process of elimination.

My next target is to take CLEP Principles of Marketing on 12/29 and CLEP Principles of Management before mid January. I have REA books for both of those exams and my trusty InstantCert