After procrastinating it for months, I finally binge-studied for a week and passed the Principles of Marketing CLEP test! I scored a 63, with 50 being a passing score.
I bought the Petersons practice tests, but didn’t find much use for them. (I only ended up using one of them.)
What is CLEP?
CLEP is an easy way to earn college credit. The $85 test can help you test out of one class (3 credit hours), saving you hundreds or thousands of dollars! CLEP is also notably easier than AP courses, and the wording of CLEP isn’t meant to trick you.
Simply find out if your college accepts CLEP credit, and which courses they accept.
They have a bunch of courses available, mainly general education courses and business courses. Here’s a few of the courses they have available:
- American government
- US History I and 2
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Macroeconomics
- Microeconomics
- Business law
- Calculus
- Biology
- French
- Spanish
- German
- English literature
- Natural sciences
The score is on a scale from 20-80, and from there you receive a “raw score.” Most schools consider a 50 passing. I received a 63!
Preparing for the Marketing Test
I had a strong knowledge of marketing from some previous business courses and personal experience, but honestly the majority of the test was in that study guide. There really isn’t a need to go out and spend a ton of money on test prep supplies. I hard-core studied that file for a week, highlighting the most important information (especially if I didn’t know it) and reviewing from there.
The marketing test is known as one of the easier tests. The College Board had a breakdown of what the test would be on, with the majority being on Price, Product, Promotion, and Physical distribution. I spent the majority of my study time focusing on this. Free CLEP Prep a good breakdown of the test, and gives links to free online sites that have more information on each part that will be on the test.
A few study tips that I used:
Use the memory palace technique.
I used the “memory palace” technique for a lot of this test. I used it for memorizing the different “stages”; different stages of a purchase, life cycle of a product, etc. and other lists or traits.
The memory palace technique is a simple but brilliant concept and it is used by nearly all of the memory champions around the world. It’s fun, it’s quick, you review it once and you have the material down permanently. You can read more about the technique here.
Highlight the most important parts.
I only used one study guide for this test, these study notes. (This is an editable file.) (My apologies – I don’t know the original source for these notes)
Have a friend quiz you.
It makes learning a lot more fun. I personally didn’t use any flashcards, I just had him read the highlighted text (aka the important parts).
Thanks for the article and study guide; the SG is very similar to REA’s CLEP Book that you can get on Kindle, which I’ve done. You can return Kindle books within 7 days of purchase too.
thanks!
I took the Marketing CLEP today and passed with a 68 after 10-12 hours of studying the study guide you linked, ModernStates’ course, and the REA PoM book on Amazon Kindle (https://smile.amazon.com/CLEP%C2%AE-Principles-Marketing-Online-Preparation/dp/073861095X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538761814&sr=8-1&keywords=clep+principles+of+marketing).
Free CLEP Tests: I used ModernStates.org’s free CLEP test deal – they gave me a voucher for the $87 CLEP test cost and a reimbursement for the $36 testing center fee (that I paid to my University Testing Center). All you have to do is take their one of their 32 free CLEP courses (PoM took about 3 hours to complete. All you need to do are the “Homework” test questions for each sections, which you get 3 attempts per question and each one is 5-answer multiple choice, and the answers for all questions can be googled. After you complete the course, they will ask you for a screenshot of the “Progress” section with all MC questions answered correctly so it shows 100% of the questions answered).
I believe ModernStates is a bunch of rich donors and professors who want to make University cheaper for college students through CLEP tests, so they’ve made free courses 32 or 33 out of the 33 total CLEP tests and are paying for the CLEP tests of students who complete their free courses, so really awesome deal. If a high school graduate took the first year or two off from physical college and used ModernStates CLEP tests, they could probably get 50-60 of their 120 hours for free, thus saving them up to $50k of a bachelor’s degree (assuming normal $25k a year for tuition and housing).
So today I got 3 hours of college credit (which consumes 48+ hours in a semester) in 10-12 hours, for $0 (3 hours cost ~$700 at most in-state schools).
And also for the next 2 years you can live at home with your parents (free housing) and take online courses at the university, or stack all 4-5 classes on one day at one time spree (i.e. 9:00-10:15, 10:30-11:45, 1:00-2:15, 2:30-3:45) such that you only have to drive into a distant university once a week (say 100 mile drive) and don’t need to wait on campus between classes. That would make 2 years $50k tuition into $10-$20k at a prestigious state school. So usual $100 to $15k, with a little intelligence…
Another method is one a lot of people do, community college for first 2 years while living with parents (only a few grand a year in tuition) then transfer for last 2 years of BD to top state school for degree (employers don’t check for transfers, only graduation school on degree).
Though I’m at a big state school and everyone’s doing 120 with full tuition and housing without CLEP. Also telltale that only 10-15% of the student body travel over the huge campus by bike or skateboard, the rest walk at 5x slower speed. And there are bikes now that you can rent all over campus with your smartphone in less than a minute. And people don’t stack their classes one after the other on the same day, and not that many people use RateMyProfessor, and the ones who do don’t use it fully/correctly.
O.O
Yay, I’m so happy to hear that! Yes, I hear you! I am able to graduate in 2.5 years debt free thanks to smart money choices, hard work and community college!