World Population Exam Excelsior

Hey everyone :wavey: ,
I'm studying for the exam World Population from Excelsior. I am using the book Population from John Weeks.
Now I have a question: in chapter 5 and 6, there are all those formulas, the crude death rate, crude birth rate, general fertility rate, age/sex specific death rate, total fertility rate and all the others. Is is necessary to learn all those formulas for this exam? Because there are so many!
And is the study guide you can download at the excelsior website a good indication of how much percent each chapter is in the exam?
Do you have any other tips for passing this exam with a good grade?
Thanks!!
Hanny
:wavey:

 

Maybe too late to help the OP, but for the sake of other questioners.

Yes, definitely learn the formulas. You don't necessarily need to have them memorized cold, but you need to be able to recognize them and understand them enough to answer multiple choice questions about them.

Honestly the number one study resource that I used for this exam was the Excelsior college practice tests. I treated the first practice test as an open book test, researching as I took it. The second test I took without assistance to see my score (41/50), then used the answers to help guide my review and further research. I got an A on the actual test, and I only studied for a couple days (however, I'm in the final stretch of my program and already have *lots* of social sciences classes and exam experience, so ymmv). It's the easiest Excelsior exam I've taken so far (5 other EC exams) - I've gotten a B on everything else except College Writing (A), but College Writing was essay based so it was more difficult.

One thing - when I signed up for the exam it was listed as upper division, but after I took the exam the print out said it was for 3 lower level credits, and then it initially transcribed as a lower level class. After calling the school though, they figured out that it's just a glitch in the computer system. So as of March 2015 it's definitely an upper division sociology exam - you just might need your advisor to manually update your transcript to reflect it.

 

Yes you must learn the formulas. You don't necessarily need to have them memorized cold, but you need to be able to recognize them and understand them enough to answer multiple choice questions about them.