DSST Success story

DSST Success story

Over the past 6-7 weeks I’ve taken and passed the Dantes exams listed below. The only material I used to study was the Thomson / Peterson’s Test Prep Guide. I honestly didn’t do much preparation for these exams. I skimmed the guide the night before during commercials. If anyone is on the fence about taking exams, don’t be! I earned 12 credits for a total cost of $320. The material in the study guide for Human Resources & Prin of Supervision exams didn’t relate much to the test. I basically took the exams blind and still passed.

Exam Title My Score Passing Score

Human Resources Management 55 46
Personal Finance 63 46
Principles of Supervision 52 46
Business Math 70 48

Does anyone have any idea what letter grade I would get for these scores?

Did I just get lucky or are these exams that easy to pass?

I want to take the following exams in the near future, any advice?

Prin of Law Enforcement
Fundamentals of Counseling
Here’s to your health
Criminal Justice
Drug & Alcohol Abuse

Will the information on instacert.com be enough to pass these exams?

Thanks for your input!!

 

The least expensive thing you can do is find the outlines and sample tests on www.getcollegecredit.com under fact sheets and do web searches on the topics mentioned.

Here's to your Health I mentioned on another thread and I doubt you'll have a problem based on what you passed so far.

Drug and Alcohol Abuse at least memorize as many of the basics as you can- most family medical guides and fact books have a decent chapter on drugs and alcohol. I don't think you'll need a textbook for any of these. Take Drug Abuse and Health together if possible.

I took all of the tests you mentioned that you intend to take recently but Health and Drug Abuse are the only ones I got the results for and I hate to get into too much detail about the others cause I don't want to jynx myself . OK I'll try:

Counseling- I took it cold. I think intuition and going with your gut feeling is important. I also have a background in social sciences and human services...

*****TIDBIT with not all but MOST of the human service/ behavioral science related tests- If your in doubt of an answer, choose the one that sounds most politically correct. It sounds silly but many times it helps.

Criminal Justice/Law Enforcement- try to take these together. KNOW your 4th 5th and 6th amendments as well as the 12th 13th and 14th. Many older adults- esp those who watch shows like COPS or action movies may be able to take these cold.

I'd like to say these were easy like other people did- but I'll keep my mouth shut until I get my results.

I hate the new scan-tron sheets that jusat came out for DSST's. Filling out the personal info for each test and then filling in the circle for each can be tiring (more so than the test itself).

Another thing- take your time. DSST's are not timed and its good to take advantage of that (unless the test center is far and you have to cram many in one day) I normally wouldn't recommend more than 3 in one day even if they are easy ones.

 

Thanks for your help .... Any other "easy" exams out there?

 

Have you taken any CLEP's? I find it much easier to find CLEP centers and you at least get results immediately.

Try CLEP Analyzing and Interpreting Literature- no study needed as long as you know your BASIC literary devices and it's 6 credits for $70 bucks! Wal-Mart couldn't even beat that. The test can be tiring and took me a full 90 mins- but NOT difficult and I always got D's in Literature in HS and College- I got a 55 (roughly a B) with no study.

CLEP Freshman College Composition with Essay shouldn't be too bad if you know your grammer- it's 6 credits but check w/ your advisor first (Excelsior I'm pretty sure does NOT accept it) I took my English Comp courses by traditional means.

CLEP Introductory Sociology- easy- 5 selection multiple choice. TIP: it's one of those "politically correct" exams I referred to.

Although I never took it I hear CLEP Introductory Psych is easy.

DSST Technical Writing is easy but check in advance if your school wants the optional essay sent in.

DSST Introduction to Computing MAY be easy if you are of average computer literacy. Some of the questions are rather passe' though (very 90's). A basic review of a computer terms in a glossary or going over a Dummies book should be all you need if that.

After all my results come in I may make one big thread of all the exams I took and provide as much info as I can on each so hopefully it can help someone.

 

Thanks for your help!

 

bceagles

I also took and passed the

Principles of Supervision
Personal Finance (received scores last week)
Intro to Business all using the dsst guide although for the personal finance i used another book and kind of felt a bit lost with some securities questions but still received an "A"

All the scores you listed would be translated to an A at Exelsior


Some other easy exams (my oppinion but as the saying goes.....your milage may vary) have been

1-Intro to Computing (dsst)
2-Info Systems and Computer applications (clep)
3-Human growth and development (Clep)
4-Sociology (clep, easy.get the REA Best test preparation book)
5-Psychology (clep used standard deviant book and video and some other book)
6-Human growth and development (used the REA book, also, taking the psych helped)
7-Educational Psych (the human growth and dev + the psych book prepared me for this one).
8-Criminal justice (quite simple, book from ebay)
9-Intro to law enforcement

All the above i prepared for with little study and scored A'd on all.

Hard to schedule days for the exams since not many centers offer dsst testing frequently in my area.

 

bceagles

By the way,

i also took and passed the
"Here's to your health" Dantes, i used the Instantcert but i felt that if i had only used that one tool i would have failed! Glad i had been doing some general reading using "google" and keying in some of the topics being tested. Exam not bad but covers alot of little areas.

 

That's interesting. My test must have been easier. I took Here's to Your Health using only Instacert and after the test felt I was overprepared. But then again, I'm a health news junkie.

 

I just got Back my test results for DSST Financial Accounting .... passing is a 47 or 49 ... I got a 51 ...... 3 more credits ..... I was way under prepaired for this one ...... pure luck .... I took Here's to your health & Prin of Law Enforcement the other day ..... I don't have a good feeling about either one of them ......

 

bceagles,

Don't worry. I came out of Principles of Supervision with a horrible feeling. When I looked over my notes afterwards, I realized I had answered SO many wrong. But I scored 61. You can't always trust that knot in you stomach.

 

Great Job!!!!!

 

I just got back my results for Heres to your health & Intro to Law Enforcment....... passed both !!!!! Heres to your health 51 & Intro to Law Enforcement 49 ..... they are both on the low end ...... I completely guessed on both of these test .... I expected a zero on both of them ..... I'll take it though!!

 

Good job

Great job!

I think I will schedule DANTES Intro to Business next. I studied over the DSST fact study sheet and did pretty good. After that I will take Heres to your health then intro to law enforcement.

See ya,

Abner

 

Make sure to take Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice on the same day so you can study for them together (and like I said before, Know your amendments.- esp. the 4th 5th and 6th).

 

bceagles,

You say you used the thompson/peterson test prep guide. I tried googling this and also looked in amazon.com. Just so I know that I'm looking for the right book, could you again please clarify that book? Very interested.

Thanks for sharing with us.

 

ISBN 0-7689-0609-1

http://www.lifelonglearning.com/books/dsst.asp

This is an easy read ..... The exams were very doable in my opinion...... I hope your experience is the same.....

Good Luck!

 

Passed 2 more Dantes Exams with very little effort! Got my results back for Fundamentals of Counseling (Passing is a 45, scored a 47) & Criminal Justice (Passing is a 49, scored a 51). I’m not scoring high on these exams but I’m also not putting a lot of effort into them. I’m not looking for A’s, just credits. This just seems to good to be true !

 

I sat for Drug & Alcohol Abuse yesterday. The material from instacert did not relate much to the exam. If I pass this exam it will be a miracle.

 

All of these I would consider "easy". A young man e-mailed me about this very topic a few weeks ago. I will copy and paste my response to him below:

What exams do I recommend you try out first? For CLEP, do Intro to Psychology and Educational Psychology first. You can take both the same day. Take intro to Sociology. Also take principles of
management and principles of marketing. Also take Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and History clep.

For DSST, start out with intro to business, intro to computers, Management Information Systems (MIS), Ethics in America, and Here's to your Health. DSST are still on paper, so you'll have to wait appx 3-4 weeks to get your results back.

For Excelsior, start with English Composition, Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management. Excelsior exams are available at prometric test centers. The roadmap actually details all the exams that you'll need to take to complete the degree. You can substitute exams for others (in some cases) if you fail or simply choose to take another exam.

The roadmap that I refer to can be found @ http://www.123collegedegree.com/degreeplans.html

 

Got my results back for Drug & Alcohol Abuse, as expected I failed. I got a 45 and you need a 49 to pass. You can’t win em’ all!! I guessed on 90% of the questions!! I was way under prepared!! A 45 tells me that in 6 months when I retake the exam I only need to study up on a few areas to squeek by with a pass!! Next week I’m going to try and take the following exams:

Ethics in America
Management Info Systems
Organizational Behavior

Any words of encouragement or suggestions?