Degree Plan – BS Math Major at Excelsior

[NAP]

US History I (77), US History II (78), Civil War (73=A), American Government (72)
Astronomy (57=A), Chemistry (67), Biology (77), Natural Sciences (73)
A&I Literature (78), Information Literacy (pass), NFA Q318 Fire Service Supervision (pass)
College Math (76), Intro to Computing (72=A), Information Systems & Computer Applications (76), Management Information Systems (73=A)
Biochemistry, Cell and Molecular Biology GRE score 580, 69th percentile, 12 lower-level and 12 upper-level credits earned
ALEKS Intro to Statistics (pass), Humanities (67), Substance Abuse (471), Health (479)
Business Ethics & Society (458), Social Sciences & History (75), Personal Finance (463)
LSU Analytic Geometry & Calculus I course (A)

Scroll down for feedback on resources used for each exam.

US History I CLEP

This was my first CLEP test. I learned a lot. Thank you all for recommending excellent study materials. I got a 77!

I plan to study for a month on future tests, but I had some extra time and studied for 6 weeks for this one.

REA study guide was perfect for this test.
Barrons EZ 101 filled in extra facts.
I liked the Resource: A Biography of America videos and website.
InstantCert was good for review.
I also had the Official CLEP Guide to make sure I was learning the correct material.
Peterson’s practice exams were confusing me. I decided to just read through them and was learning the material better that way.

I plan to use all of the above for US History II. This time I’m going to start by reading the Peterson’s to get an overview of the material and see if that works better for me.

It seemed like there were more colonial questions than the 30% the guide said. I had studied that a lot so it wasn’t a problem. Don’t skip that time period. I had studied for a harder test, but it did cover some knowledge of every topic.

I was surprised to learn so much about American Government and the Civil War that I’m thinking about taking the extra time to study for and take those tests, also.

Update: Historyteacher.net – I really liked the AP Quizzes for US History II. I wish I had used them for US History I.

US History II CLEP

This was my second CLEP test. I learned a lot and studied for 4 weeks. I thought this test was harder than US History I. It took me longer to get through it and I didn’t have time to check for mistakes, so I was surprised to get a 78!

Thank you all for recommending excellent study materials. I used:

Peterson’s practice exams – I just read through them to get an overview of the material covered.
REA study guide seemed too easy for this test, but was a good starting point.
Barrons EZ 101 was great for extra topics and details.
Resource: A Biography of America videos
InstantCert provided info on more topics.
Historyteacher.net – I really liked the AP Quizzes. I wish I had used them for US History I.
I also had the Official CLEP Guide to make sure I was learning the correct material.

Even with all of this, I felt like my studying was lacking some depth on certain topics while I was taking the test. It seems that I had learned enough to make lots of educated guesses. Looking more things up on Wikipedia might have helped, too.

I was surprised to see that Reconstruction is covered on this test also.

Civil War & Reconstruction DANTES

This was my first DANTES test. I got a 73, which is an A at Excelsior! I had not even heard of DANTES exams before finding this forum. (They are available for civilians to take.) Thank you all for your help.

I wasn’t planning to take this exam, but after taking both US History CLEPs, I thought what I had learned for those would be helpful in continuing on to study for the Civil War exam. Also, having several ancestors involved has made this time period interesting to me. I learned a lot and studied for 4 weeks.

Thank you all for recommending excellent study materials. I used:

Idiots Guide
SparkNotes Civil War
SparkNotes Reconstruction – This had several topics that were not covered elsewhere.
Ken Burns DVDs and website - The Civil War . The War | PBS
IC – I should have spent more time on these.
American Civil War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Quizzes to Test Yourself - This is similar to the AP Quizzes, but there are many more questions. It will help with the basics, but is not as deep as the exam.
ClassZone - Creating America: Beginnings through Reconstruction
Civil War Battles Quizzes and Civil War Battles Trivia -- FunTrivia There are a lot of Civil War trivia pages here. This one is for battles. These are fun, but it is too easy to get off track, like what is the name of Grant’s horse? (One was named Cincinnati.)
Official DSST Fact Sheet (DSST - GetCollegeCredit.com) has 12 sample questions. A couple of the questions were on my exam. There were more battles on my test than what was listed on the fact sheet; they were covered as important battles in the study materials.

Review materials from US History CLEPs:
REA has excellent coverage of material in about 30 pages.
Barrons EZ 101
Historyteacher.net – AP Quizzes are good for this but there is no coverage of the battles.
Resource: A Biography of America videos

I wish I had spent more time looking for some practice exams at textbook websites.

This exam was not as fact based as I hoped. It helped me to learn the dates so that I had a better idea of the order of events and how they related to each other, but knowing dates was not on my test. I also thought I might need to know the number of casualties and troops at each battle, but that wasn’t on the test either. It just had the total numbers for the whole war.

I did need to know the second level of generals that made a difference in the battles, not just the main generals. I had trouble with a couple of questions about describing the general’s attitudes/actions.

Be sure to understand the politics leading to the war, during the war, and during Reconstruction. The Reconstruction SparkNotes was very good, but I still didn’t have enough depth on the consequences of the different reconstruction plans. (What I knew did not match the answers.) Maybe Wikipedia has more.

There was also a problem with some of the questions missing from my paper-based exam. I posted the details here:
http://www.degreeforum.net/general-educa...-exam.html


American Government CLEP

This was my fourth exam. I passed with a score of 72. I studied for 4 weeks. I am thrilled because it took me 2 years to earn 10 credits through correspondence courses and now I have earned 12 credits in just over 4 months with CLEP/DANTES exams! Thank you all for your help with this!

I wasn’t planning to take this exam, but after taking both US History CLEPs, I thought what I had learned for those would be helpful in continuing on to study for the Civil War exam and this exam. It did make studying much easier, but it really only helped on a few actual questions.

Thank you all for recommending excellent study materials. I used:

CliffsQuickReview book (This is also available for free - http://www.degreeforum.net/general-educa...#post54695)
(New) REA study guide with 2 practice tests
IC – I liked it for this test for review and because it had different words and meanings than other resources. The other study guides help me put things into context better.
Friend’s notes from high school class
Read the Constitution (see link below)

Reviewed REA for US History I which has excellent coverage of Articles of Confederation and Constitution in about 15 pages.
Peterson’s practice exams – I actually took these this time and didn’t just read through them. I thought they were helpful.
I also had the Official CLEP Guide to make sure I was learning the correct material.

I liked all of these websites, but I didn’t get to spend much time at them:

U.S. Senate: Reference Home > Constitution of the United States – with explanation

Quia - 27 Amendments – games

We the People | 5th Edition - lots of quizzes

Court Cases Menu

TheCapitol.Net > Glossary of Congressional and Legislative Terms

I was well prepared and didn’t find the questions to be tricky. I didn’t even have very many that I had to narrow down to 2 possibilities and then guess, but I did have a couple that I had no idea what the answer was. I took 7 practice tests and some of the questions were actually on the exam. I felt really good about this exam all the way through. I think it is harder to get a higher score with fewer questions (100 vs. 120 on US History). This exam was much closer to the fact-based exam I had been hoping for with all of the previous history exams which weren’t. Knowing definitions was very helpful. It is intro level and a broad test that is not too deep.