Greetings everyone:

I saw on this site that somebody mentioned Spark notes for Marketing. Does anybody know if the Spark chart is helpful? It's only $5. I'm using REA and InstantCert, and will take the official CLEP practice marketing test (17th edition) when I've studied some more. For Management, I found the Peterson tests excellent, but they unfortunately do not exist for Marketing.

Yesterday I took the Management CLEP and scored 76 out of 80. I would like to say, however, that I did not find the test particularly easy, and I worked hard for 3 weeks using InstantCert, Comex and the Peterson tests, not to mention the official CLEP test. My university requires not 50 but a score of 65, so I was not overconfident. In addition, we only get one shot, and that's it. No testing 6 months later if you fail.

I write this because I see a number of entries where people say they got high scores with just a few hours/days of prep, and the tests were a breeze. Possibly these people are business majors? Maybe they prepped a little more than they realized? I already have a humanities BA with a GPA is 3.87 (I'm doing a pre-MBA now), so I know how to learn effectively, and I still think it's important to study and prepare--a lot.

I write this for anybody who reads the claims that you can do minimal prep work and just fly through a breezy test and all is well. From what I've seen, too much confidence about how easy something will be is a good way to be taken by surprise and fail a test. This holds true especially if your institution requires a higher score than the standard 50, and/or you only have one chance to pass.

Now about those Spark notes for Marketing -- any opinions on those?

-WF