I worked through the Business Law practice exam yesterday. This was my first experience with a DSST practice exams and so far I’m not a big fan. Some of the “rationales” were actually wrong. And the questions seemed cheaply written, kind of ambiguous. After the exam, you can’t review the whole thing or any of the correct answers. And each 50 question test costs $20. I guess I was expecting a little more bang for my buck. I sat the real law exam today and I did find 2 questions that were similar to practice exam questions. I think that with the questions on the fact sheet and the review form IC I could have made it without the practice exam.

Does everyone else use the practice exam regularly? How much do they help? And are they worth the expense?

Today I completed my 19th exam. Most of those were CLEP and I always used the full length Peterson exam before each test. Those were free, full length, and you had 3 to choose from. I would never suggest this to a beginner, but now that I have the swing of things (of course I don’t know today’s scores…) I am thinking I might be able to do without the expensive, short, filled with errors, DSST practice exam.

What do you guys think?

Where did you take the pratice exam? Maybe it was just that particular site. Just a thought.

Cade,

I felt the same way when I used a DSST practice exam for the first (and only) time. This is part of a post I made in July of last year:
So you're definitely not alone in your opinion of the DSST practice exams. However, I do feel that the ECE practice exams and some of the Petersons practice exams are well worth the cost.

Just my two cents.

JoAnne

I have not tried the DSST practice exams yet (I assume you mean the ones on The DSST Program) but I am very interested to hear what others think of them as I was planning to use them for my upcoming Business Law II and Money & Banking exams.

You might find this useful: Petersons has DSST practice exams! They're just really, really hard to find on their site Try this link:
US Air Force - Education and Library Resource Center - Dantes Subject Standardized Tests

__________________
Chris
120 credits, 3.60 GPA, B.S. General Business, Excelsior College to be conferred 6/20/08

CLEP Accounting-71, Humanities-70, Marketing-78, Macro-70, Sociology-66, HG&D-72, Management-77, American Gov't-63, Business Law-73, Edu Psych-67, Biology-71; DSST MIS-66, Statistics-78, Principles of Finance-66, Money & Banking-65, Health-65, Business Law II-69, Environment-68, HRM-70; ECE Ethics-A, Org Behavior-B, Info Lit-P, Labor Relations-C, Ops Mgt-A, Business Strategy-B

I used the DSST program practice tests on the get-college-credit website. I thought these were the only practice exams for most DSST. I have seen the Peterson DSST practice exams; they only offer a few, but I will certainly use them when i can.

How many of you guys skip the DSST practice exams altogether?

I may be in the minority here, but I actually liked the DSST practice exams. Granted, they'e expensive, but they get you exposed to a similar test. I believe it was Ethics that I used it on. The DSST exams helped me find weak points and brush up on them.

I've taken only one of the DSST practice exams and swore I'd never do it again. I actually think I came away from it knowing less than when I started. My impression of the practice exam was no more favorable than yours for the very same reasons you stated. I've found a couple of the Peterson's CLEP practice exams to be considerably less helpful than others in a few instances, but never completely worthless like the DSST one.

__________________
Tests Completed:
Amercian Government (CLEP)
Intro to Psychology (CLEP)
Human Growth & Development (CLEP)
Intro to Educational Psychology (CLEP)
US History I (CLEP)
US History II (CLEP)
Principals of Macroeconomics (CLEP)
Principals of Microeconomics (CLEP)
Environment & Humanity (DSST)

I've taken a couple of the free ones...I have the book that has 8 or so exams in it. I mostly take them as a security blanket to see how big of a margin I get, not because I found them marvelously helpful. It's nice to know what types of questions there will be, but in terms of real learning, it hasn't done much. And it doesn't explain the answers to the tests...instead of telling you WHY the right option is right and the others are wrong, it basically just say, "Yup, that's it, all right." Here's an imaginary example:

All calico animals are called:

A. Cats
B. Dogs
C. Cows
D. Pigs

A is the correct answer--all calico animals are cats.

See? They include the text of the question to make a "complete answer," like that is somehow "explaining" it, and just leave it at that. It isn't imparting new information.

So as I said, I mostly use it as a security blanket. I certainly wouldn't pay $20 for one.

__________________
DONE! History degree from TESC!

CLEPS:
College Math-69, Sociology-70, Humanities-72, Am. Lit-61, English Lit-69, S. Sciences & History-65, Eng. Comp/w essay-75, Microec.-64, Macroec.-73, Western Civ. I-71, Western Civ. II-71, American Gov't-71, US History I-75, US History II-65, A&I Lit-77, Prin. of Mgmt-76, Prin. of Mktng-76. Biology-69

DSST's:
Civil War & Reconst.-70, Modern Middle East-63, World Religions-76, Tech. Writing-67, Prin. of Supervision-67, HR Mgmt-69, Rise & Fall USSR-64, Vietnam War-60, Ethics-69. Intro to Bus-67, Org. Behavior-69, W. Europe-60