Any experience with the Excelsior exams?

I am looking at the Excelsior exams as another source of credit but I have not heard very much about them compared to CLEP and DANTES.

Has anyone taken them? Are they at the same level of difficulty as CLEP's? Do the "Learning Packages" from Excelsior really prepare you for the exam?

Thanks.

 

CONTRASTING EXAMS
On the ECE/Regents exams, my experience* offers no evidence that they require different study or revision approaches than those applicable to CLEP, DANTES or the GRE subject exams. In fact, in the case of ECE multiple choice tests, I found that most of these 3-hour exams could be completed in an hour or an hour and a bit.
* Based on passing 40 proficiency exams - 15 CLEP, 13 ECE, 10 DANTES, and 2 GRE subject

In comparison, I took the full 2 hours and 50 minutes to complete the GRE subject exams and the full 90 minutes to complete most of the CLEP exams (though a few CLEP exams took only 60 minutes 30+30 - paper and pencil version). DANTES exams do not have a time limit, but most agree 90 minutes is appropriate, and, for these exams I took at least that amount of time to finish.

So, all else being equal (knowledge of the specific subject), which it seldom is I grant, these data would indicate the ECE/Regents tests are in fact a bit easier to pass AT THE SAME LEVEL (upper or lower division) than other proficiency exams. Looking at the results in terms of grade or percentile ranking, my performances were remarkably similar for ECE, GRE, DANTES and CLEP examinations, i.e. the outcomes were about the same.


LEARNING PACKAGES
As with the other exam types, I used none of the recommended preparation material for the ECE/Regents tests (too expensive) with the exception of the free tests and free notes downloaded from the Excelsior web site. These notes are a vital preparation tool. It may be however, that the exam-specific proprietary study materials available directly from Excelsior College, will prove valuable to some learners.


See BA in 4 Weeks exam tips section Testing Out and the Exam Difficulty Index for a relative scale of individual exam difficulty across exam types.



Lawrie Miller
BA in 4 Weeks
http://www.geocities.com/ba_in_4_weeks

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I found the ECE examinations on a par with DANTES, which I found slightly more difficult (or less easy) than CLEP, with the following exception: American Dream, which I consider to be the hardest of all the tests I took; the material is really extensive. The other one I found not too difficult, but one that was graded low (C) was English Composition, I completely disagree with the grade awarded, but the problem is that it is a subjective grading system (Same as American dream), most of the others are multiple option, you either get a correct answer or you don't; in these two somebody reads your essay and returns a "veredict". So if you don't need these two, stay away from them, the rest are actually easy.

My actual experience was with :
Ethics: Theory and Practice (easy)
World Population (very easy)
Organizational Behavior (somewhat easy)
Research Methods in Psychology (easy if you know statistics)

Guillermo Hernandez

 

It's interesting that the web site....

...that gives you the pass rates for all three (military), list on the ECE page Organizational Behavior has the one that has the highest pass rate (also has been taken by almost twice as many people as the next most popular exam). But most feel World Population is the easier.