Rant's testing odyssey

I bought a Standard Deviants video back in January of 2002 on half.c*m and it arrived in June 2003. It was addressed correctly, no damage to packaging, sent media mail and postmarked in December 2002. Though I can't speak about the seller you purchased from -- in my case, it was not the sellers fault at all. Just 6-month service from USPS.

 

Thanks everyone for the kind words of encouragement. I found unixman's post very motivational in getting me started, so hopefully my progress can do the same for others.

Here's an update on my overall progress towards my degree:

-42 credits will hopefully transfer from previous coursework. This includes Calculus and English Comp credits to meet those requirements, and should fill most of the arts and sciences requirements at Excelsior.
-27 credits obtained via testing so far
-69 credits total obtained of 120 required, 51 remaining
-30 required business credits remaining from 9 tests (includes statistics)
-21 elective credits remaining

Rough outline of the bulk of my remaining test plan (includes 30 business credits and 6 elective credits) :
3/16 CLEP Information Systems
3/16 CLEP Intro Educational Psychology
3/20 CLEP Intro Business Law
3/23 DANTES Business Law II
3/23 DANTES Mgmt Info Systems
3/23 DANTES Principles of Supervision
3/26 ECE Business Strategy and Policy
4/2 DANTES Principles of Finance
4/10 CLEP Principles of Accounting
4/16 ECE Statistics
4/23 TECEP Production/Operations Management

May: GMAT preparation and testing

 

Do take the Analyzing and Interpreting Lit test to help fill your electives. It's 6 credits and you'll easily pass it based on your work so far. Also, consider the Dantes Criminal Justice for electives, another easy one. You'll enjoy giving your brain a rest with these two tests. Keep us advised.

 

Passed CLEP Information Systems today with a 70 and CLEP Analyzing and Interpreting Literature with a 69. I took seekinghelp's advice and added this Literature exam to pick up 6 easy elective credits, and I decided to push the Ed Psych exam back and pair it with another Psych exam. Talk about your 2 very different exams. Since i have a strong background in IS, I buzzed through Info Sys in 37 minutes, reading the questions only long enough to choose an answer. The Literature exam, on the other hand, took almost the full 90 minutes, and I definitely had to read and re-read the text several times before choosing an answer. It wasn't exactly an easy exam since there was a lot of effort put into it, but if you take the time to read and understand the text exhibits, it's easy to do well.

As far as prep materials, I didn't prep for either exam. The Information Systems exam covers general computing, including the Internet and web browsers, the development process, computer input and output, RAM, CPU, etc. I'm sure that a Dummies book would suffice here. For the Literature exam, since this covers comprehension and not facts, it would be difficult to study for this. I guess a good way to prep would be to find some sample questions to get an idea of the format. Also be ready to fully read when taking this exam. This isn't your standard business text, this is prose, olde English, etc. You essentially get a short story of a few paragraphs, and 5-10 questions will deal with that story. You may need to interpret what "thee" in the story was referring to, what a synonym for a word might be, or get an idea of what one of the people's attitude is.

Progress: 36 credits via testing in 35 days, 78 credits obtained total. 27 business credits remain, 15 elective credits remain.
Next Up: CLEP Intro to Business Law on Saturday. Also looking to get a couple of CLEP electives under my belt on Friday.

 

I'm curious as to why you are taking the ECE Statistics exam instead of the DANTES one. DANTES is a lot cheaper. It also happens to be the very next exam that I will be taking.

 

I believe that the ECE version counts as upper level credit, whereas DANTES doesn't. I've been meaning to clarify this and also make sure that I will need this as an upper level credit, which might not be the case. I'd definitely be interested in hearing your experience with the DANTES version as this test in general has me worried.

 

man! how can you do so many tests so quickly and still get a high grade. you must have some prior knowledge in the topics. It took me a month to prepare for one and pass it. tell us your secret

 

ECE Statistics is lower-level, as is DANTES.

Cheers,
Mark

 

I think my head would explode from studying so much for one test after another. I do wish I would have clep'd a few classes over the years though because it would have saved me time. If you can pass a macroeconomics and microeconomics and a business law test in quick succession, I have to hand it to you though... I passed those classes via online tesc courses and they weren't exactly easy... for me at least.

 

I wish there were a secret, then I wouldn't have to worry so much about the tough exams coming at me in the next few weeks. As I mentioned before, I'm pretty good at picking things up quickly and have traditionally tested well on multiple choice exams. Although I don't have formal training in most of these subjects nor much direct involvement with them in my career, I have been in the professional workplace for 10 years now and do have some involvement with the business and management side of the business.

When I first came to this board and began reading and reading, I remember someone stating that one thing to keep in mind is that the courses involved in a baccalaureate degree are geared towards 18-22 year old students with little to no work experience. I keep this fact in mind whenever I prepare for a test, and it puts things in perspective. Another thing to keep in mind is that the pass rates on some of these exams are fairly low. Something else that I've noticed in most of these exams is that if you have a general knowledge of the subject, you can typically remove 1-2 possible answers from every question, which raises your odds of getting a correct answer on a "guess". I have also used this board extensively when selecting preparation materials so that what I'm spending my time reading will prepare me for the exam with general but not particularly deep coverage.

 

I should clarify a mistake above, by "pass rate" I actually meant the number of questions one needs to answer correctly to pass a test. I believe for some of these tests, that threshold is under 50%.

 

Glad my tip on the literature test proved fruitful for you. Keep us posted.

 

Statistics

I don't plan on taking this exam any earlier than 29 March. This will give me at least two weeks to prepare.

I have never had Statistics, although I did well in High School Algebra, Geometry and Trig (a long time ago). Calculus in both High School and College was a struggle.

I started this week by viewing the series "Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability" at www.learner.org. Although geared toward teachers who already have some Statistics knowledge, I still found the series helpful (and free).

I have gathered several books on Statistics. A friend had "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics". This looks ok and I will be using it. However, at first glance, it seems to gloss over some preliminaries and doesn't define what everything is.

From the library, I have "Statistics for the Utterly Confused". I like this one better, although it goes to the other extreme of breaking up the text with definitions for absolutely everything. I would have prefered a glossary either at the back of the book or in each chapter.

Another library book is "Statistics Without Tears". From the back cover: "This book is written in the belief that the basic concepts of statistics can be learned without having to perform calculations." This may be fine for introducing the concepts, but the exam will require that I know how to do those calculations in detail. I'm skipping this one.

From the local used book store, I picked up two traditional style books. One is a self-learning guide and the other a college textbook. I got these for additional material, just in case. Since I have trade credit at the used book store, I only paid 40 cents for both.

Tonight I dive into the books in earnest. When I feel that I am prepared, I will test. I'm really not counting on being ready by the 29th, but since the exam has to be ordered in advance, that was the date I told the proctor to have it by. He knows that it may be later.

Just as an aside, the main reason I am taking the Statistics exam is that I have seen many occasions over the years where a knowledge of Statistics would have been useful. This is my opportunity to learn the basics and get credit at the same time.

I hope this has been helpful. I'll let you know how things turn out. Good luck with your "odyssey" and watch out for Cyclops.

 

Anything beyond mean, median and mode and I'm lost. I just read where statistics has been added to the major requirements at Excelsior for Psychology. Too bad, I wanted that major, but alas, it's not to be now.

 

Mojoehand, thanks very much for the detailed info. Very helpful, and I'm already planning to add a book or two that you mentioned to my study plan.

 

Thanks for posting this Rant, it is most helpful. I'm currently taking two online courses through the local community college. In addition I want to start doing some testing this spring as well.

I have a question about the exam locations. I'm currently having my exams proctored at the local library. How are your exams administered?

Thanks
Wayne

 

Wayne, the ECE exams are scheduled and given through Prometric testing centers. I'm taking the CLEP's at a local community college. I had great difficulty locating a DANTES site locally, but a college about an hour away will administer those. The only test for which I have to find a formal proctor for is the TECEP test in Operations Management.

 

Passed the CLEP Introduction to Educational Psychology today with a 65 and the CLEP Social Sciences and History exam with a 61. Not bad considering I spent an hour on prep for the Ed Psych exam and only read through the exam description on the Social Sciences exam. These were both elective exams with no grade letter, so I didn't want to get myself too far out of my Business Law studies.

For the Intro to Educational Psych, I used only the lecture notes found here. Like I said, I skimmed through these in about an hour. These notes don't cover everything on the exam, but having a good handle on them should get you a passing grade. In particular, focus on cognitive development, the cognitive and behavior perspectives, testing (validity, norm-referenced tests, standardized tests, IQ test), and research methods. Also know motivations and environment vs. genetic ideas. Know the different types of memory (short term, iconic, semantic).

For the Social Sciences and History exam, there really isn't a way to prepare for this specific exam because the content is so broad. I did find that my preparation for Economics and the Ed Psych exam helped with this one. There were some sociology and general psych questions which were fairly obvious to answer, a few that I took a guess on. I have a pretty good handle on American History, and there were probably 10 questions covering that area, and maybe another 5 questions on recent world history. There were 5-6 questions that covered history of civilizations that I had to guess at and a few that dealt with specific psychological theories and theorists that I was familiar with but didn't know the exact answer. There were 1-2 art history questions. I'd say another 10 questions covered economics, particularly supply/demand and some history on economic policy (Black Tuesday, New Deal, etc.). I was fairly confident that I would pass this, and I buzzed through the questions at a fairly rapid pace to finish in an hour (119 questions on this one), so I probably could've gained another couple of points had I been more diligent. I'd suggest that anyone that needs to take this exam as part of a larger testing plan should take it later in the schedule since preparation for some of the subject exams will help with this. I'd have done much better had I prepped for an Intro to Psych exam or a formal history exam before this one, and my previous Econ and Ed Psych prep came into play here.

Progress: 45 credits in 39 days, 84 credits obtained in total, 27 business credits remain and 9 elective credits. I realized last night that one of the prior courses that I was counting as a transfer is a CIS class from just over 10 years ago, so those 3 credits probably won't transfer, and I've adjusted my numbers to reflect that. I also might add a few more elective tests so that I can suppress a few D transfers, assuming that those D's would figure into my GPA. I want to head into a Master's program with over a 3.0 GPA, and including those D's will cut it close. I also may want to supress one of the prior transcripts entirely (I attended 2 schools previously) as it appears that admission requirements for the MBA programs I'm considering require all previous transcripts.

Next Up: Intro Business Law tomorrow. Shooting for 3 DANTES on Monday in Business Law II, MIS, Princ of Supervision, the first of which I'm prepping for in combination with the Intro Business Law CLEP, and the last 2 should be gimmes.

 

I took the DANTES MIS exam in late December. Yes, most of it is a gimmie if you know computers and their application. However, a fair part of the test covers the management and design of computer systems, so you had better know specific terminology and concepts about those.

I was weak in those areas, so I got an MIS text from the library. Reading the chapter summaries and a little bit of certain chapters was sufficient for me to get an "A" on this exam. Of course, I have been working with computers, networks, software, web design, etc. for 18 years. The practice exam on the DSST fact sheet was helpful in pointing out my weak areas.

 

Passed CLEP Introductory Business Law today with a 60. I'm a bit disappointed in this score, but it's 3 ungraded credits in the business requirement, which is all that counts. My downfall was focusing too heavily on contracts and not enough on the rest of the test content. The CLEP exam description is pretty accurate, be sure to pay attention to the "Legal Environment" section which covers a broad range of topics. Don't get me wrong, contracts are heavily covered on this exam, but I didn't spend enough time getting some of the other topics down pat.

For prep materials, I used the Barron's Business Review Series Business Law, which I intend to also use for the DANTES test. I only read the relevant sections for this test, skipping the sections that weren't listed in the exam description. Again, I concentrated on the contracts section, trying to get the terminology and facts down, and only read lightly through the other sections which ended up hurting me. I also flipped through the REA Business Law I book prior to the test, and it did help with a few questions. I'd say the REA book alone would get you through this if you studied it well, but you wouldn't get the depth that the Barron's book gives you. Funny that a few of the examples that I read in the REA guide were almost identical to a few examples in the Barron's guide.

On the topic of contracts, many of those questions were in the form of examples, such as Bill offers to sell his car for $5000, Joe offers $4000, to which Bill declines. Joe then says he'll pay the $5000 in the original offer, is there a contract?

Other things you'll need to know: business ethics and schools of ethical thought, torts, layout of the court system, minors and contracts. I had probably 5-6 questions on the UCC, including 2 almost identical questins that dealt with types of warranties covered in the UCC.

Progress: 48 credits in 40 days, 87 credits obtained total, 24 business credits remain, 9 elective credits.

Next Up: a DANTES trifecta of Business Law II, MIS, and Principles of Supervison on Monday.