Home » Previous Page » News Item:

CLEP American Government

CLEP American Government


The CLEP American Government test is a 3 credit exam Social Sciences and History exam. This was our first CLEP exam and it makes a great starting point for students who love history, are interested in government and politics or are competing in debate.

Here is a list of materials we used, our method of study and what you must know to pass.....

Materials available for this exam can be pretty overwhelming. I used any text available at the library covering CLEP American Government or AP US Government and Politics, including


  • Kaplan AP U.S. Government & Politics 2009 (Kaplan Ap Us Government and Politics)
  • Barron's AP U.S. Government and Politics
  • CLEP Official Study Guide 2010
  • American Government (Cliffs Quick Review)
  • Peterson's online practice exams
By far my favorite was the Cliffs guide. You can access it free here.
Be sure to study the glossary (we memorized it) and take good notes. The other sources were used for test practice and "out loud" question. Other materials may be just as good. We would have used InstanCert but we had not discovered it yet.

REA just released their CLEP American Government w/CD-ROM (REA) (Best Test Preparation for the CLEP). Consider using it as your main textbook and supplementing with the Cliffs Guide.

Prior to this exam we had little experience in dealing with multiple choice questions at the college level. Together we learned to reason through choices and narrow down to the best answer. Daily I read aloud from the Cliffs guide while they took notes. We spent a lot of time chasing rabbits and creating analogies to help reinforce difficult concepts. This was followed by lots of drill with flashcards made from the Cliffs glossary. The last phase of study was practice tests and as soon as they were scoring in the 60's (according to the CLEP scoring method) we made the appointment for the exam. Other methods may be just as good but this served us pretty well.

In order to pass this exam you must know the following concepts well:


  • The Constitution, ammendments and articles
  • Articles of Confederation
  • Major supreme court cases
  • Civil rights acts and their impacts
  • Civil Liberties
  • Types of Federalism
  • The job of the Senate, President, VP, ect
  • Congressional Procedures and committees (differences between committees)

A more extensive list of topics covered and percentages is covered at College Board.

I highly recommend this CLEP for any student in NCFCA Team Policy debate, both for the knowledge gained but also because policy debate prepares the student for parts of this exam. Your student will learn so much about the government and be able to apply this to negative and affirmative argumentation. For those not in debate this still makes a good starting point as it can be a good foundation for the US History 1 & 2 exams.

Continue ...

 PDF
Tags:   Collegiate Homeschooling    CLEP    American    Government
Rating: 0.00 (0 votes) Rate this article
Bookmark and share this news item: