How true are study.com tests to the curriculum?

[kevro64]

How true are study.com credit tests to the curriculum?In other words if you nail the chapter and practice exams will you nail the test for college credit?

[TexasTink]

I always find the finals of any test to be fairly different from the practice tests. However, if you are confident on the practice tests, you should do just fine on the final. It’s just that sometimes the finals can be worded differently/more tricky questions and sometimes have a different emphasis on particular material than I was expecting. I rarely took any practice tests for the SDC finals and did perfectly fine on all but the math one. Even that one I passed easily, it was just a terrible final.

[Supermind]

In my observation, study.com has recently increased the complexity of its final exam. When I took study.com tests from October-December 2018, I used to find a larger percentage of questions that were similar to the practice tests. But from January 2019 onwards, I found many more trickily worded and application-based questions. Not that they were very difficult, but it calls for greater focus and an ability to decipher what exactly they are asking, and how to apply what you have learned.

[jsd]

could that be the difference between their LL and UL courses? or have you noticed in for LL courses too?

[kevro64]

could that be the difference between their LL and UL courses? or have you noticed in for LL courses too?

Not sure what LL and UL mean

[jsd]

Lower level, upper level. I imagine as Supermind has gone on, he's moving towards more upper level course work with study.com, and was curious of that could explain the difference he's noticed

[Merlin]

It varies by specific course, and as some have commented the upper-level courses tend to be more focused on testing your ability to apply what you've learned where lower-level courses tend to focus more on understanding concepts.

That said, in general, in taking 20 courses with Study.com, I found that the practice and chapter tests generally draw from the same test bank, which is not the same as the final exam's test bank. But, there is crossover... maybe 25-30% of the questions are the same or very closely worded, some of those may be reversed (as in "what as in which of these is NOT the right answer" types of questions).

For most courses, all the questions are generally taken from the course lectures. So as long as you pay attention to the course material, you should do fine. I found a few exams (databases and systems analysis) that appear to have questions which are drawn from elsewhere (plus they are generally poorly worded) but most courses draw their questions from the course text.

[zzzz24]

The UL are definitely a little more "trickier" than the LL courses, but still nothing that should really give you trouble if you know the material.

[Supermind]

Lower level, upper level. I imagine as Supermind has gone on, he's moving towards more upper level course work with study.com, and was curious of that could explain the difference he's noticed

Mine has been a ‘reverse journey’, so to say. I tackled all but one UL courses between October-December 2018. In 2019, I mostly only worked on LL courses and 1 UL course. I see a difference in difficulty at both levels. The LL courses were also having tricky questions; and the UL course got trickier.

[posabsolute]

My general technic has been to cram a course in 1-2 weeks and take the exam as soon as a finished (it depends if you are aiming only at a pass I guess), this technic never failed me, however, there are 3 or 4 courses (out of 20) where I needed to study before.

This was before 2019 tho, so if there exam difficulty level changed that might be less recommendable.