Do not bother if you have a vocabulary better than a small child's!

I took this CLEP test in what was to be the last semester. I had taken many upper-level courses that required good writing skills. My major was anthropology. I scored very high on the multiple choice portion, and thought I would pass the essay portion as well.

Too late to register for the required class, I received notification that I had failed the CLEP test, based solely on my "failed" essay. I had a professor read it and asked what she thought I had done wrong, and the only thing she said was that I came off as a bit "pretentious"! This error on my part kept me in university for another semester, just to take a class in which I knew everything I was taught.

If you do write in a less "business-centered" style, you can try to dumb it down a lot. The test seems to be biased towards business majors.