i found negative reviews on some web sites about the new official guide 19th edition from the college board,,

i am asking before i buy ,, what is the best version? should i buy the latest one or older v?

Edit: cheapest place to buy it ?

I see the negative reviews on Amazon.com, but I don't agree. I have the 19th Edition, and I'm perfectly happy with it. You do have to understand that it is what it is -- sample questions for each of the exams, and a little additional information. It's not a text, and not a tutorial. It's not as in-depth as, say, the Princeton Review Cracking the CLEP book. But the sample questions are a good indicator of the material that will be on the real exam. That's all I expected from this book, and that's what it delivers.

now, you make me think, i am brand new to clep,, trying to learn from IC experience

what kinda of books except the official must i have?..
do i have to get the Princeton Review Cracking too?

The Official Guide is what you use to check that you are prepared to take a particular CLEP. It has sample questions (typically around 50 per exam) for every CLEP exam. The Princeton Review book covers only the "General" CLEP exams, but it is more in-depth. It provides explanations for each correct and incorrect answer. It's a better study guide for the exams it covers, but it only covers the General exams.

If you're going to take a number of CLEP exams, and some of them are General exams, I strongly recommend both books. They're both pretty cheap, especially when you compare them to other study materials and practice exams. But they are not really study materials themselves. They are more about checking your level of preparation.

-Gary-

I saw the same review and got nervous, so I purchase the CLEP Official Study Guide 16th Edition for about $1.00 (buck) on Amazon, I also purchased Barron’s CLEP 9th Edition which has full-length practice exams for English Composition, Humanities, Math, Natural Science and Social Science and History which I picked-up for about $3.00 also on Amazon. They both are great and didn’t cost me an arm and a leg.

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Passed CLEP & DSST, Principles of Marketing, Principles of Management, Principles of Supervision, Human Resource Management, Here's To Your Health, Civil War & Reconstruction, Drugs & Alcohol Abuse, Introduction To Psychology, Introduction To Sociology, Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, Criminal Justice, Into to Law Enforcement, Astronomy, Environment and Humanity, Technical Writing, Foundations of Education, Western Europe Since 1945, DSST Organization Behavior, ECE Ethics: Theory & Practice, Intro to Business, ECE Abnormal Psychology, ECE World Population, ECE Psychology of Adulthood and Aging, Fundamentals of Counseling

Interesting question... I used the 16th edition for all 11 of my CLEPs. I bought the 18th edition when it came out because I figured 2 years, something must have changed, right? Well, I compared some of the tests side-by-side and hardly found any differences so I returned it. Haven't seen the 19th edition.

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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