I heard that Empire College can try to pull your degree out for more than two years, I wonder if anyone has any experience with them and how long the degree usually takes.

Thanks
Dina

As a history major, I have to take the following DSSTs:

Intro to the Modern Middle East
Western Europe since 1945
The Civil War and Reconstruction
A History of the Vietnam War
Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union


I'm trying to map out which courses to do when, as I'm also still working on my core and some electives. For those of you who have taken any/all of these tests, can you advise me as to which would are the easiest and which are the hardest, so I know better how much time to plan for each one?

I'm not worried about the Civil War and Reconstruction--I'm a Civil War reenactor and do some work at a Civil War museum, so mostly I'll just have to do some brushing up. But I'm not really sure about the others.

I see people taking the English Composition with Essay here... Are there any that have taken it without the Essay portion? How are the multiple choice questions on the Eng. Comp w/o the Essay? Can I still use IC to study for the English Comp. w/o the essay?

Finished today with an A in Gerontology...the 'test-out' experience has been such a fulfilling process, I almost didnt want to walk away from the test..

Started in December with an Associates degree from '94 and 60 credits to go after evaluation from Excelsior. Wish I had known about this process earlier, but oh well.

I found Instacert sometime in March. It helped a lot as a study aid, although I always used the recommended textbooks as well. Okay, not all of them--after all, dsst recommends about 1300 resources per exam. In which case I just picked one. If Prentiss Hall covered the topic it would be my top pick of publishers. For Excelsior exams, after taking Cultural Diversity and reading the three recommended texts, one of them an unimpressive, boring, home-made (photocopied look, really) collection of readings from Excelsior (60 #$@$ bucks) I swore off any other test that required an EC text, or multiple texts.

Additionally with books---always bought the second to last edition, averaging 5 bucks a book. I have a stack of books in my living room three feet high.

Easiest test: CLEP Marketing or Management, take your pick.
Hardest: DSST Soviet Union.
Most Surprised by Grade (sad): ECE Organizational Behavior. Thought I got an 'A,' couldn't believe I got a 'B'. Took time after that to go over questions better.
Most Surprised by Grade (happy) 'A' DSST Soviet Union...go figure.

Well, it's been fun. I definitely took more from this forum than I gave back.
So to all of you, thanks and good luck...


....oh yeah, one more thing. My instacert expired last night before my test. I had to laugh--I guess they knew I was ready.

Just smoked Principles of Management. Well, I got a 70 so maybe not smoked but passed by a good margin nonetheless.

I studied IC, Petersons, and the Cliffs Guide. There were quite a few questions that I had not seen material on from any of my sources, but they were pretty much common sense if you thought them through...

Had a few on people and thier theories, a couple of "what's the current philosophy for this or that management scenario". Those were the stumpers. I don't think I read a thing about "current" management thought so I wouldn't know where to begin on those.

Oh, one odd question about calculating the break even point for a business or product so make sure you know how to do that (I had to guess).

That's all I remember so on to Sociology!

Aaron

So anyways, I need some serious help with collage. I wanted to get done in 2 years but my mom now say that's impossible at the rate i take tests (which is one every 2 to 3 weeks). I already study 2 hours a day. I guess what i need now is a list of really easy tests that i could take in less than a week of studying. I'm taking psychology and sociology next after western civ 2. And i know a lot about both so i was hoping i would only have to study a little for them. Any advice would be well appreciated.

Does anyone know if u can claim the cost of CLEP exams on your taxes. I was hoping to take a Life Long Learning Credit of 07 taxes.

Question 17 of the sample test in the Official CLEP Study Guide (18th ed) asks:

"In profit-decentralized companies, which of the following responsibilities of division managers should be subject to the LEAST restriction by top manager?"

What is a "profit-decentralized company?" Is that when each division is financially independent and autonomous?

Just wondering who else currently attends or has recently graduated from Charter Oak. I'm about to take my first DSST tests in early July and would love to hear from some of my fellow "classmates."

Not really related to IC but is anyone aware of any distance learning CIS type courses, preferably in a self-paced or compacted format, that one can take for credit at TESC? I've got Dantes MIS and DB management, sys analysis and design, C++, and networking courses covered. Just need another programming language or administration type course for my last requirement, reasonably priced would be nice. Thanks!