How are you preparing for Ethics in America - DSST?

[tvelasquez]

I have gone through the Flashcards and currently reviewing the Practice Scenarios (which are really good and interesting). I have also used several of the websites, wikipedia and suggested links in the specific feedback area, However there seems to be so much information for each subject/person.

So what are you doing to get such a great score in a short period of time and how are you finding what information to keep and what information to throw away for each subject/person, assuming I have absolutely no common sense?

Are you taking each subject/person and summarizing what’s needed? Please let me know what study methods you are using to prepare for this exam. I hope to sit for the exam sometime next week I’ve already spent about 10 hours this week going through the Flashcards in IC and wikipedia.

For example: I’m listing each subject/person and trying to summarize what’s important and what I think would be needed for the exam, this is only a short version, the list keeps going.

Utilitarian Theory

• The utilitarian principle is traditionally expressed: Always act to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus sadness or pain)
  
• Form of consequentialism
  
• credited to Jeremy Bentham. Bentham found pain and pleasure to be the only intrinsic values in the world
  
• Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are considered the two greatest utilitarians; these British philosophers, writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, developed utilitarian theory and are typically associated with act-utilitarianism
  
• Bentham proposes a calculus of utility
  • Act-utilitarianism
    
• act-utilitarianism which directs us to determine our moral obligations by considering the consequences of each act
  • Rule-utilitarianism
    
• Rule utilitarianism is based primarily on one assumption. The assumption that in order for a society to function, it's citizens must all obey a universal set of laws
  

John Stuart Mill

Jeremy Bentham

Divine Command

Rawls, Natural Law, Plato, Aristotle, etc…

[reshab912]

I would be taking this exam in my next set... so donno knw... but i heard exam is considered as a low hanging fruit.. but still genuine efforts have to be made...

[AimsHigh]

What I do when there are so many differnet people and events to remember is I make a note card for each major person or event. I list only things that can fit on one side of the note card, and make sure that it contains only the most vital information. I found that helps me narrow down the information that I absolutely must know. It's similar to a flashcard, but I don't study with them the same way.

[mcgee]

I just passed the ethics test today and i was told i needed a 400 to pass and i scored a 422. All i did was go through the flashcards a few times and read some things on wikipedia. I hit the score button thinking i failed, i knew i had seen the questions before but didnt think i knew the answers. I guess i did. My advice is to just go take it after you go through flash cards a few times. Its really common sense for some of them. I had a friend that took it without studying at all and passed with a 402. good luck

[Epiphany]

I took the older version of this exam today. I studied for about 6-8 hours.

It had a number of very difficult to understand questions. With practice they became clearer. The information needed to answer the question was very basic.

I had an interesting issue, there were 4 yes/no questions that could not be answered at all. The question was basically a short paragraph about an ethical situation, and then a "yes/no". All of the other questions like this had a sentance after the paragraph indicating the issue you were supposed to decide upon. But in this one particular scenario (repeated 4 times) that sentence was not there. I made a note of it and wrote it in my comments at the end of the test.

[bmills072200]

What I do when there are so many differnet people and events to remember is I make a note card for each major person or event. I list only things that can fit on one side of the note card, and make sure that it contains only the most vital information. I found that helps me narrow down the information that I absolutely must know. It's similar to a flashcard, but I don't study with them the same way.

Excellent suggestion...that is what I did for this exam...