Biology, Chemistry or Natural Science

<p>I need one science class left at my university before I go abroad for a year. I need a backup for if I get my dream internships and won't be able to take classes over the summer. Which brought me to my three options: Chemistry, Biology or Natural Science.</p>

<p>Chemistry -
I loved Chemistry in high school (albeit, it was 4 years ago) and I was good at it. Well, I was good at the math. I wasn't good at the parts that didn't contain math.</p>

<p>Biology -
I was pretty bad at Biology. B - but barely - in it. I struggled with the whole "mitosis v. miosis" thing and memorizing the order of cell division, etc. </p>

<p>If it helps any, I'm fairly good at Physics as well.</p>

<p>My college accepts all three with a 50. Knowing what you now know, which one would you suggest? Does the fact that the Chemistry CLEP is harder than others outweigh that I was good at it in high school?</p>

<p>I’d recommend getting the REA prep books for the Natural Science, Biology and Chemistry CLEPs – take some practice tests and see where you stand. The books are good review and will help you gauge how much preparation you need for the tests. Natural Science is 50% Biology.</p>

<p>Don’t knock yourself! Saying you were “pretty bad” in Biology and then that you earned a “B” is not bad! A passing scaled score of 50 for all CLEPs is comparable to earning a “C”, so I bet you would do fine depending on how long ago it was that you took Biology.</p>

<p>Definitely check out some practice tests and see how much you recall and how comfortable you are with the subject matter.</p>

<p>I took a practice test for all three. And the results were kind of surprising (at least to me). With no studying whatsoever I got:</p>

<p>51 on Biology
31 in Chemistry
29 in Natural Science</p>

<p>Looks like I know which one I’m going to be taking come later this winter!</p>

<p>Which practice exams did you take – the ones offered by CLEP? Petersons? REA?</p>

<p>Your Biology score does look good as long as it was a CLEP practice exam. I believe the Peterson ones give you a % score, whereas the actual CLEP exams give you a scaled score (not the same thing at all).</p>

<p>Have you verified with your university what score they consider “passing”? You definitely want to know this!</p>

<p>Keep going! It’s great to hear that you are following through. I can’t wait to hear how you do after you take the real exam later. Good luck!</p>

<p>I took the Peterson’s one and it said this “percent 51, score 51.” Is that true?</p>

<p>My uni takes a 50 for all of them so I think I still need to study but maybe not as much as I thought I originally needed to.</p>

<p>You might want to do some further checking because I am almost certain the Peterson’s exams do give your results in %. This is not the same type of scoring system that your actual CLEP exam results use. The CLEP number is a “scaled score”. If your university says they will accept a “50” that means a scaled score of 50, not 50%. A score of 50 = low ‘C’ (70-75%).</p>

<p>Definitely keep up the studying as I am sure your score will continue to improve. Have you tried to take any of the actual CLEP-prepared practice exams? I have been told that these more closely match the difficulty of the actual exams. You can purchase a download of inidividual exams on CLEP’s website (gives the detailed breakdown of information covered on exam, resources and practice exam) for $10.</p>