CLEP Natural Sciences

It is entirely multiple choice. The exam contains approximately 120 questions to be answered in 90 minutes, and some of those questions are pretest items that are not scored. You should expect graph, table, equation, and short verbal-passage stimuli rather than only standalone recall items.

The College Board states it is intended for nonscience majors and is not intended for those specializing in science. It suits candidates who need to meet a distribution or general education requirement in the natural sciences at the freshman or sophomore level, and it tests concepts an adult with a liberal arts education should understand.

Difficulty comes from breadth, not from deep specialization. About 40 percent of the exam tests knowledge of fundamental facts, concepts, and principles, about 20 percent tests interpretation of graphs, diagrams, tables, equations, or passages, and about 40 percent tests application, with more emphasis on qualitative than quantitative reasoning.

There is no published raw-score cutoff. The ACE recommendation is a credit-granting score of 50 for 6 semester hours, but each institution reserves the right to set its own credit-granting policy. Contact your college to learn the score required for credit and the number of credit hours granted.

The source material for this page does not state a retake policy, so confirm the current rules with the College Board and your test center before registering. Treat the first attempt as the one to prepare for, since a retake costs another registration fee and delays your credit decision.

The two halves are weighted equally at 50 percent each, so divide time accordingly. Within each half, prioritize the heaviest blocks: organism structure, function, development, and heredity at 20 percent, and heat, thermodynamics, states of matter, classical mechanics, and relativity at 12 percent.

Two failure modes stand out. First, over-memorizing isolated facts when roughly 60 percent of the exam involves interpretation or application. Second, skipping the smaller physical science topics, such as electricity, magnetism, waves, light, and sound at 4 percent, or the universe at 7 percent, which still represent real question counts.

Registration is $97.00. The College Board also lists a CLEP Natural Sciences Examination Guide as a $10.00 PDF, a free study plan and list of online resources, free sample questions, and an official practice app. Use the sample questions to calibrate the style of interpretation and application items.

No. The 6 semester hours figure is the ACE recommendation, and each institution reserves the right to set its own credit-granting policy, which may differ from ACE. Some colleges may grant specific course credit based on the total score for a two-semester survey sequence; others may grant nothing.