DANTES Rise & Fall USSR exam thoughts

[snazzlefrag]

Hi All,

Just got back from my USSR exam. There is no doubt that this is an Upper Level exam. They asked a lot of questions about 'obscure' facts and details.

I don't have anything to add to the mix that hasn't already been said.

- There was NOTHING on my exam prior to Alexander III.
- The vast majority of the exam concentrated on Lenin, Stalin, the 1917 Revolution, and the Civil War.
- Three or four questions about writers/painters/dissidents.
- Quite a few questions on 'foreign policy' that were not explicitly covered by Instantcert (your additional resources will fill in the gaps for you though).
- Several questions on the end of the USSR (1990's).
- Not too many questions covering Khrushchev and Brezhnev (maybe half a dozen on each).
- A couple of questions required you to know what "Socialist Realism" is.

If you study using Instantcert AND the several web links I posted earlier in this thread, you will know the answers to most of the questions. There were only perhaps half a dozen questions that I had to completely guess on. The rest, I either knew, or could make an educated guess based on what I had studied.

Nevertheless, this was a very challenging exam and I found myself really having to think through the answer choices before picking one. As the DANTES factsheet points out, 95% of the exam is recall of facts. However, a LOT of the questions require you to know MORE than just 'basic' facts...

For example:
A Lower Level exam (or a less difficult exam) might ask you what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. This exam, instead, might ask you what the causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis were, or what the repercussions of the Cuban Missile Crisis were.

That's the best way I can think of to try and explain the difficulty level of this exam. I hope it makes sense!

It took me almost three hours to complete this exam. Not because I didn't know the information. Rather, it was because I DID know the information, but had to really concentrate on most questions before I could decide which of the answer options was the MOST correct. It's tricky!

Anyway, as I said, this is not really anything new. The others have already said most of what I just described.

A couple of specific things to know:
(These are not direct answers to questions on the exam. But if you know this info you might be able to work out the answers to a few of the questions).


- Know the real name of Tito (leader of Yugoslavia).

- Know who Anna Akhmatova was.

- Know which Soviet Republic declared independence first.

- Know which Republics made it through the 90's without significant bloodshed.

- Know which countries the USSR tried to make alliances with prior to WWII.

I hope this helps somebody,
Snazzlefrag
(P.S. Now the wait begins! As with almost ALL Dantes exams....I think I passed, but I may have failed! I'll update you once I find out.)