joel66 Wrote:I just took my first practice test for U.S. History I. I noticed I only got 48.33% of the questions right and scored a 58? I was reading Excelsior's webpage and it says I need at least a 50 or higher to get credit. Based on those numbers, I would need to get approx. 39 (32.5%) of 120 questions correct? Of course, I'm not going to get over confidence and still plan on spending another two weeks of taking practice tests and studying, but I'm surprised you can score this low. Not that I'm complaining because it means I can studying hard and get a lot of courses completed. Is DANTES the same way?
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Are you using the score conversion table in an REA book? That's a great guide, but remember you will get different questions. My suggestion is to take many practice tests-from a few sources- if you imagine there are a thousand questions that they "could" ask you, you want to improve your odds of getting the ones you know!
A simple example, is if you know a lot about Grant and not as much about Lee. In a practice test, you had more questions about Grant, but in another practice test you had more questions about Lee. See? There is a factor of luck involved to some extent.
I always tell my husband "I hope they ask me the ones I know!" In my Social Sciences and History CLEP, I didn't study world history. (boo hiss- hear me out) But I have a weak understanding of world history- I didn't fool myself into thinking I could learn all of the world's history in a month! So, I studied hard on the areas I knew something about. In the end, I got lucky and didn't get many world history questions...but I could have- I just hoped my strengths in other areas (psych, soc, anthropology, geography) would carry me to the 50. (I got a 62 and am certain I didn't answer a single world history question correct unless it was an accident- I didn't even read them, I just mark "A" and moved on) There is a bit of strategy to it all. (search, you'll find a lot of info here on strategy!) For me, I like REALLY knowing an area of a subject and banking on getting close to 100% of those right- rather than only knowing a bit of everything. In a subject like history, you probably know something about something already, so I would use that to an advantage.
Remember how the scale works- it is a curve reflecting how students who took a course would score- and you need to pass with a C. That scaled score is 50, but the number of questions you need to get right in order to score a 50 will change from test to test. In a test where "everyone scores high" you will need to score higher to earn the 50. If you search CLEP scoring, you can find some excellent studies (not the college board web site) evaluating the validity of CLEP exams. Dantes is scaled, but with only 4 questions (not 5 like CLEP) you might have the statistics of chance on your side. Clear as mud?
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