Success story and Observation

[bmills072200]

Well...I took my first CLEP today in Macroeconomics and passed with a 64. I am very happy to get that one over with. I am now on to Micro...

Anyway, I wanted to make an initial observation about the differences between CLEP and DSST. Having taken 2 DSST exams already, I think that DSST exams are a little bit more difficult. Not that the Macro exam was easy, but I did notice a few things about the CLEP:

Even though there are 5 answer selections instead of 4 on DSST exams, one or two of the options on the CLEP seemed to be obviously wrong if not ridiculous. I found that the DSST exam answer options were far more plausible and difficult to disern.

Second, the difficulty of questions in the subjuct seemed to be a lot easier on the CLEP. There were a lot more "general" questions about macroeconomics that were pretty obvious with very little study on the subject at all. Where as the two DSST exams that I have taken seem to really dive into a lot of the meat of the subjects that require a deeper knowledge.

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this or if it may just be specific to this exam that I took...please share your thoughts...

[larry7crys]

I agree. CLEPs "feel easier" but I have more luck with DSSTs.

[donvago1]

I have a different view. I have taken about 10 cleps and only 3 dsst exams and I feel that dsst's are way easier than cleps. While taking the dsst exams I have never really felt that they were even a little bit hard. Even when I sat the dsst upper level exam " Civil War and Reconstruction" I felt that there is know way this is an upper level exam. Come to think of it I just realized why I felt they were easy. These are the 3 dsst exams I have taken.

1. Principles of Supervision : I sat this exam right after taking clep "Principles of Management

2. Intro to Computing : I sat this one right after taking clep "Info Systems"

3. Civil War and Reconstruction: I had previously taken clep US History I and II.

So I guess it was my previous knowledge and IC that helped to make the dsst exams only appear to be extremely easy. I will get my first true test in about a week when I will take dsst " drug and alcohol abuse" then I can give a true assessment of the difficulty of the dsst exams.

[GettinMyBA]

I dunno - I've taken both CLEP and DSST but I would never be able to make a judgement as to whether one was easier than the other. I think that since there is a vast degree of difficulty swing between tests (for example, Princ. of Mgt and Pric. of Statistics are both DSSTs - does that mean that they are both equally difficult? Ask anyone who's taken stats! LOL) this can never accurately be judged.

Someone mentioned the fact that CLEP has 5 mult choice vs 4 for DSST. While it's true that one of the CLEP is usually off the wall, I can definitely say that TIME has been an issue for me with a few tests. Now if time is an issue, and I am gonna have to blind-guess a few questions because I'm at the end of allowed test time - I would certainly want my guesses to be 1 out of 4 instead of 1 out of 5.

Personally, I much prefer DSST over CLEP. I like the interface and the fact that I have an 'account' where I can log-in and look at my past results. I love that I just log-in and then take my test... no need to go thru all the setup and verification stuff like a CLEP. Also my test center allows me to sched a DSST with 1 day notice, or evenallows me to make taking a second test a 'game-day decision'. They need a few days notice for CLEP, but I recently learned that this may just be an issue at the center that I use.

[larry7crys]

I guess I am biased towards CLEPs. I could walk into my testing center and take one while I still have to take pencil-and-paper based DSSTs and schedule them a least a week in advance (sometimes sooner).