I feel lost studying for precalculus not because it`s hard but cause i can not find a good study materials for it. I went to all libraries around and all i found was calculus. found some links also in previous posts but it`s not into the point.

I am trying to study from "precalculus demystified" which i got from a friend but i don`t see it useful, it`s just makes it more complicated. I wanna try ALEKS but i have not had any experience with them before.

so please who took this exam before, guide me to the study materials.

Aleks is good for learning, but I found it to be extremely frustrating for precalculus. I seem to remember there being about 260 sections of the pie to complete. It reassesses you about every 15 questions and those sections you completed but miss on the reassessment have to be repeated. I spent about 60 hours with aleks and only made it through about 150 sections. I gave up on Aleks and through a google search found a powerpoint presentation called ClepProfessor Precalculus that costs about $30. These two study resources were more than enough for me to pass the clep.

Thanks for ur reply.
I joined ALEKS yesterday. I finished about 59 out of 265. I like it thought except that as you mentioned, it takes a long time to finish. I am sure if i managed to finshed them all , i am not gonna need another resource, do i? I`ll also try the official sample test.
Wish me luck

Edit: i am taking ALEKS as a study resource only, cause they wont approve the credits .

I think you could supplement it with some web referencing to look-up concepts when needed. There's a myriad of excellent resources online that can be a perfect complement to ALEKS. Here's a couple off the top of my head:

Purplemath
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If you make it through all of the aleks precalculus sections, the clep will be easy for you. To get to the end of aleks you have to 100% master all the sections, where as with the clep exam you only need to get about 60% of the questions to pass.

What helped me through ALEKS reassessments was having explanations of questions I did not understand printed out, my notepad where I wrote down my work, and excel where I kept all my formulas.

Thanks gus for website.

What i don`t like about ALEKS reassessment is that it downgrade you after when you answer one or more questions wrong. it`s just annoying.

clepste Wrote:Thanks gus for website.

What i don`t like about ALEKS reassessment is that it downgrade you after when you answer one or more questions wrong. it`s just annoying.

This happened to my son today, he lost 2 points out of one of his pies. He wasn't happy. As his mom, I just encouraged him. BUT, for CLEPping, I have other ideas. Here are my thoughts on the 100% competency idea- I think it's actually better to know 100% of some questions than 50/50 of all the questions. I used that concept on several of the exams I took. The stats are in your favor:

Example- Social Studies and history had 25% world history, 25% US History, 50% other subjects. Well, I hadn't taken the world history 1 or 2, but rather than study those new subjects, I went back and reviewed the other sections. I felt that I was pretty sure I'd hit 100% on the psychology, sociology, anthropology. I was also pretty sure I'd hit over 80% on US History and political science. So- I totally ignored the world history. It worked, I scored well (69 I think) because I used my strengths.

So, maybe this idea would help you in calculus. If you are very strong at the foundation concepts, you can probably do ALEKS for a while and just take the CLEP. If you don't pass the CLEP, keep going on ALEKS and then submit it for credit. The glitch of ACE evaluation has been resolved, it was a false alarm and you CAN earn credit for completion of the ALEKS course.

I agree about the reassessment part. I don't know if it has changed now, but I remember that I would have liked more control over the continuous reassessment part, such as the ability to skip or postpone a a few tests. I think that can potentially save a considerable amount of time. They can offer this as a configuration parameter in the currently available master account options.

I find myself in the same boat as clepste. I am trying to study for Precalc, but can't find any good study materials.

I tried ALEKS for a while, and I was planning to just complete 70% of ALEKS and get the 3 credit hours. However, my dad was somewhat skeptical of whether most major colleges would accept ALEKS. He advised me to just try to take the CLEP exam, which is universally accepted; better to be safe than sorry.

Anyway, I have studied with the REA Precalc book and was very underwhelmed with it. It's very unclear and not user-friendly. I just recently stumbled across CLEPProfessor Precalculus. I might try that. I also used the Standard Deviants videos for Precalc, which were all right, but not enough.

I planned to take the Precalc clep exam last Friday. I took a REA practice test and scored a 46, so I was really scared and decided to wait a little while longer before I took the test.