I'm trying to wind it up quickly though and so I found a couple tests that would count toward some missing upper division credits in social science and electives.
I just took and passed the DSST test "The Civil War and Reconstruction".
Minimum passing was 47. I got 66.
Took about an hour and cost $80 but that is way better than taking a class for a couple months and spending $1500!
The questions are pretty detailed. Not just the major battles and policies, but many questions about relatively minor points.
For prep I used my high school AP History book (The American Nation by the late John Garraty...best book ever) and Ken Burns' PBS series. If you could do just one thing, I think watching the 11 hours of the Burns series would give you what you need to pass the test. There were some questions that were direct quotes.
(Side note, I just discovered that Garraty passed away in December 2007. That's too bad. Stephen Ambrose and then John Garraty - truly a pair of outstanding historians.)
I will say you should be cautious about some of the prep materials out on the web for this test. I looked at some and there were some wrong answers on some of the questions. If this were an area I didn't know as well as I do, I probably wouldn't have known that.
Great job sweetie!
ReplyDeleteThat is pretty impressive. I was just saying to a friend how I love history, but am horrible at all the dates, and then I realized history is the dates and I felt pretty lame....so yeah, I am impressed......when you teach History for Dummies I will sign up.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there were any dates on this test.
ReplyDeleteHistory is so much more than dates and places.
It's stories. When you listen to someone like Stephen Ambrose or Shelby Foote speak about something - they are master storytellers in the old tradition of oral histories.
Honestly, I don't care what the history is even about if the teller of that story - spoken or in print - is a great story teller.
(As witnessed by my famed watching of "The History of the Airplane Hanger" in the hotel while I was at Disneyland!)