Peterson's Score vs. CLEP score

[jess]

I took a Peterson's Test for American Government and got a 72. How does that translate to a CLEP score?? I don't understand the whole CLEP scale/ formula for scoring???

[gcalvin]

The short answer is that you don't really know. A perfect score on a CLEP is an 80, and if you manage to answer every question wrong, you get a 20. A 50 is the mean raw score of everybody who took the exam during the evaluation, but you don't know what that raw score is. Not only that, but some of the questions you will answer will not count toward your score, but are being evaluated for future versions of the exam -- and you will not know which questions those are.

But having said all that, a 71% raw score on a Peterson's exam probably means you are ready to pass the real exam. I never took any Peterson's exams, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but if I were scoring in the 70s on an Official Guide practice exam, I'd feel like I was ready for the real thing.

-Gary-

[annegirl]

My rule of thumb is that if I can get more than 50% of the questions right on Petersons that I am good to go for the real CLEP. It has been my experience that Petersons is always much harder than the real thing. When I was prepping for American Government I believe that my highest score on Petersons was in the 60% and I scored a 64 on the CLEP. Good luck!

[jess]

Thank you so much for the info. I think that I am finally ready for my first CLEP test tomorrow!! I have found these boards very beneficial and I am very appreciative of the knowledge I have gained by looking through the posts!!