How close is the official College Comp practice test to the real thing?

[dcan]

I'm planning to take the College Composition Modular test without essay -- my college (UMUC) will not require an essay for 3 credits, and I can't test out of more writing credits anyway so the essay is useless to me.

Anyway, I set a timer for 50 minutes tonight and went through the official CollegeBoard study guide[1] and finished with about 2 minutes to spare and got 46/50 (92%). How accurate is that practice test compared with the real test? (I know it is 90 questions in 90 minutes) There were only five of the "Improving Sentences" questions that supposedly are more numerous on the real test. I got all of those correct. The tough part to me was reading all the passages and interpreting them correctly in the time allotted.

So should I consider myself ready? Or should I use the Peterson's tests as well? And if so, how accurate are they?

Thanks for any help!

[1] http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloa...-guide.pdf

[dcan]

Nothing?

I'm concerned about the difference between CC and CCM without essay. CCM is 90 questions and is supposedly a lot tougher.

For what it's worth, my test scores so far are:

Peterson's CLEP Success Pre-Test: 86
Peterson's online test #1: 92
Peterson's online test #2: 96
Peterson's CLEP Success Post-Test: 84

The problem is those tests are for the CC (or CCM with essay) option, which is reportedly easier than CCM without essay. The tests don't spend much time on the "correcting sentences" portion, which is what concerns me. For example, do I need to know the difference between indicative and subjunctive moods, or the inner workings of past participial phrases? Or can I just see what sounds "right"? Doing the latter resulted in the scores above.

Thanks again, and I'll definitely post on exam-specific regarding this.

[MA2]

92% is about as good as you can get. On some CLEPs, I would take the Petersons practice test, get a 50%, and go in and take the real test the next day with no study and do great. I'm sure you'll do fine.

[dcan]

OK thanks. I think I'll try to schedule it for later this week then. We'll see how it goes.

[dirtybob]

I'm freaking out about this one too. This will my first CLEP so it should be telling if I even remember how to study. Been going through the Instacert study guides and have also been hitting the REA book for about a week now. I'm going to give myself one more week and go take the test.

I just keep telling myself that I don't need to learn this stuff, just learn to pass the test. But in reality I'm starting to doubt myself.

Any idea what they are looking for in an essay?

thanks
DB

[dcan]

I just learned how to subscribe to threads, so I'm just now seeing your response. Sorry.

I've started drilling on essays because it turns out I can only take CCM with the essay -- it's the only one offered by my testing center. I really stressed when I heard that, but started looking around and found some great resources:

• SAT Essay Topics
  
• GRE Essay Topics
  

The SAT is created by CollegeBoard, the same company that makes the CLEPs. Someone else on the board here (I think -- maybe DegreeInfo) said the GRE prompts were pretty similar.

I started drilling myself on those prompts, forcing myself to crank out essays. I've written four in the past few days -- three argumentative, one source analysis. I went from crappy (IMO) to fairly decent, which I hope really means better-than-average-score. The source analysis part seems pretty easy to me. The strategy I developed in my practice test was to write out brief bullets outlining the pros/cons in EACH of the pieces (because a piece may reference a pro or con the other one doesn't), then draw lines between the ones that oppose/refute each other. This made it easy to see what the main lines of argument were on each side, and gave me my angle of attack for my own essay.

Since I've started writing the essays I find it is easier with each one I write. One of the early ones is posted on EssayForum. I made a lot of mistakes (overly general opening, etc) and took 10 minutes too long. I also took the position of appealing to the probable mental/ideological bias of the English professors in my mini-rant. But the next two went faster, though still right down to the wire.

I'm currently planning to write two more, maybe from the Peterson's test this time for a real simulation, and then test hopefully this Thursday.