CLEP Sociology - should I reschedule?

[cptdilbert]

Actually just took it and only got a 64. Am completely shocked. By far, the lowest score on all of my Cleps so far and I still dont understand how that happened. Knew the material cold and thought the questions were a joke.

Despite the standard '50' being a pass for a CLEP, you can't compare the scores across the tests. The scores are scaled, not raw, and the expectations are different from test to test.

A great example of this is College Board's own recommendations. Certain schools and programs require "B Level" work for some pre-requisites or classes within a major. To help facilitate this, College Board posts a score recommendation for an equivalent to "B Level" work or higher. The score recommendations range from 56 to 69. Humanities is tied for the lowest score recommendation at 56.

This means if Humanities is your lowest score, that's within the norm. I have no idea how they score their tests, but my guess is it has to do with how broad of a topic "humanities" is, so there is an expectation of a lower percent correct.

As an aside, DSSTs are more straightforward with their new scoring system. 400 is C level, 434 is B level as noted in this PDF. DSST also provides the percent complete range required to pass in this PDF since there are multiple versions of the tests and the questions are not necessarily weighted equally. This means a '400' could mean anywhere between 36% to 76% correct depending on which test you take and which form of the test you receive. This is a massive range.

An A on a UExcel exam doesn't mean 90+% correct either. Be careful with apples versus oranges comparisons when you are judging yourself and your test scores.

Good luck