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What Are the Easiest and Hardest CLEP Exams?

The College-Level Examination Program, or CLEP, is a series of exams from the College Board designed to test students’ knowledge of advanced material. Scoring highly on these exams can help you earn credit and graduate college sooner.

What Are the CLEP Exams?

The College Board distributes various exams to test your college readiness and help you earn credit hours, reducing the cost of higher education. These include the PSAT, SAT, AP exams, ACCUPLACER, and CLEP exams.

The AP, ACCUPLACER, and CLEP exams test your introductory college material knowledge, and passing them can earn you credit.

Currently, the CLEP exams cover Composition and Literature, World Languages, History and Social Sciences, Science and Mathematics, and Business. Amongst these sections are more specific tests.

About 2,900 universities accept passing CLEP exams for college credit. The College Board has a recommended credit-granting score guide, but your school may decide a different score.

What CLEP Exams Should I Take?

If you want to save money and time in college, you may want to take a CLEP exam. The best exams to take are the ones you are most confident about, but keep some other factors in mind. If you want to self study, be sure to check out our recommendations for the best CLEP study prep books.

Consider Your Knowledge

The difficulty of CLEP exams is subjective, all depending on your strengths, weaknesses, and prior knowledge. When choosing an exam, look into your academic record. Check out which classes you got the highest grades in and see how well you recall this information. Just because you got an A doesn’t mean you know the content.

Remember the difficulty of these courses. For example, if you took honors or Advanced Placement English courses, you may have a stronger background in this topic than if you took a regular-level one. Nevertheless, lower-level classes may still have provided sufficient knowledge of the subject.

Look into a practice exam to see if you have enough knowledge in that area to take that particular test. No matter how confident you are on that topic, make sure you study it before your exam. The CLEP tests will cost you money, so you will want to pass them the first time.

College CLEP Policies

If you have decided which colleges you want to apply to, you should check out their CLEP policies. While many schools accept these credits, not all do. You don’t want to waste time and money on an exam that won’t count for anything, so make sure your school is not part of the 2,400 schools that do not accept these credits.

Major-Specific Requirements

Even if you have sufficient knowledge in a certain area and your school accepts CLEP credits, you may still waste your time if you take an exam that does not match your major requirements. If you want to be a chemical engineer, you probably don’t need to take the Financial Accounting exam.

Consider taking exams that meet general education requirements. Some schools have limits on how many credits they’ll accept in each area, so check these out first. If you get your Gen Eds out of the way, you can focus on your favorite subjects at school. Also, taking major-specific courses at your college will provide you a better background in that area than skipping the in-depth class with a test.

However, if you think your background is strong enough in that topic, feel free to take exams that provide credit in introductory-level classes for your major.

Easiest and Hardest CLEP Exams

The ranking of CLEP exams depends on the percentage of students who passed, but remember that the ease depends on your educational background and personal strengths.

Also, many of the metrics come from military statistics. Since those in the US military can take the exams for free, they are more likely to take it without studying, indicating that their passing rate is slightly lower.

For the below rankings, we will utilize the 2017 civilian pass rate for each CLEP exam.

Test Name	Test Volume	Pass Rate
Spanish Language	32,300	91%
College Composition Modular	3,530	83%
College Composition	9,996	81%
Introductory Sociology	4,167	80%
Principles of Marketing	2,587	79%
French Language	2,819	78%
College Mathematics	4,382	76%
Human Growth and Development	3,000	75%
Analyzing and Interpreting Lit	6,267	75%
Principles of Macroeconomics	1,467	72%
German Language	791	72%
Principles of Microeconomics	1,395	72%
Info Systems and Computer Appl	1,511	71%
Introductory Psychology	3,476	70%
History of United States I	4,061	69%
Western Civilization I	1,190	68%
Humanities	1,629	68%
Principles of Management	2,596	67%
Precalculus	1,825	63%
Social Sciences and History	859	62%
English Literature	1,009	60%
Intro to Educational Psych	1,129	60%
Biology	4,595	60%
Natural Sciences	1,630	57%
History of United States II	3,991	56%
Financial Accounting	803	55%
Calculus	1,579	53%
College Algebra	8,291	52%
American Government	3,702	52%
Introductory Business Law	780	51%
American Literature	1,446	51%
Western Civilization II	1,222	48%
Chemistry	1,457	39%

As you can see, the Spanish Language exam has the highest pass rate. However, people will only take the Spanish Language exam if they have a strong Spanish background. If you do not have the foundational knowledge of this subject, you will be amongst those who do not pass.

The Chemistry exam has the lowest pass rate. This subject is difficult, and many people have to take a chemistry course to graduate. If you did well in high school chemistry, you might be more likely to take the exam. However, the CLEP exam covers much more than an honors chemistry class, so it is far more challenging to pass.

Final Thoughts

If you want to graduate college a little sooner, you should consider taking CLEP exams. Before choosing one to take, make sure you have a strong background in the subject and that your school accepts CLEP credits. In terms of which test is easiest or hardest, some have higher pass rates than others, but it depends on your educational strengths.