Crunch time - call for help!

[gcalvin]

How has your success with IC been? I plan to use it as a primary study tool for any CLEP/DSST Exams I need.

First, let me say that InstantCert is very much worth the money. I paid for the $108 six-month membership and I don't regret it for a minute. I would definitely recommend it to anybody taking more than one or two CLEP or DSST exams.

Having said that, I'm not sure I'd use it as a primary resource for anything. To me, "primary" means I don't know anything at all about the subject and I need to learn it from the ground up. In that situation, I want to start with a text, or at least an outline. To me, IC is about drill. It's not so much about concepts, but more about individual facts.

For most of the CLEPs I didn't seem to need IC. The Official Guide and the Princeton Review books were my most helpful resources, and I used several of the Barron's books. I did use the IC flashcards quite heavily on several of the DSST exams -- Criminal Justice, Drug and Alcohol Abuse, Here's to Your Health, Civil War and Reconstruction, and even Principles of Supervision. I used them for the ECEs too, but not as heavily.

My problem with the IC flashcards is that too often I find there are too many cards per set. I would be a whole lot happier with them if I could split them up into sets of no more than 20. I get frustrated and annoyed trying to work through sets of 40 or 60 or more flashcards. It just feels like they're going to go on forever. I know it doesn't make much sense, but I'm sure I could do three sets of twenty much more quickly and happily than one set of sixty. Still, I don't mean to complain -- for the money, it's a terrific value.

But hey, that's just me. Your Mileage May Vary.

By the way, I did manage to complete Chapter 3 in the Business Strategy text, and aced the quiz. The quizzes are open book, but they're still not easy. They seem to be mostly "which of these is NOT xxx" type questions, and the wrong answer you need to choose is very often quite plausible. It's twenty questions per chapter (at least so far) and they count for 50% of your total grade.

-Gary-