CLEP Success: How to Pass the Humanities Exam

humanities clep The CLEP Humanities exam is worth 6 college credits and tests a student's knowledge of literature, art, music, and architecture. This is a very broad exam consisting of 120 questions that need to be answered in 90 minutes.

All the questions are multiple choice and some incorporate visual elements, like works of art from various historic periods or drawings of ancient architecture from Rome and Greece.

Since this particular CLEP exam covers so many topics, most questions will be very general. For the art questions for instance, be familiar with the general characteristics of artistic periods: know the traits of baroque, neo-classical, and impressionism, to name a few. Questions on architecture will also focus on general features of buildings from broad historical periods.

The questions on music mainly cover notation and other symbols, like key signature and clef. There won't be many questions on music history, just the basic mechanics.

A student's knowledge of literature needs to be more specialized for this exam despite its broad overview. Passages from plays, novels, and famous speeches comprise part of the literature related questions as well as types of characters and their symbolism within literature. Familiarity with Greek tragedies and myths is very helpful.

Some parents may be wary of the material their children will be exposed to in studying for this exam. There is little chance of encountering any artwork of an offensive nature on the actual exam but in typical art textbooks, this may be an issue.

Recommended Resources

Humanities Study Guide by Comex or Humanities Study Guide by REA
5 Basics by Barron's
Cracking the CLEP by the Princeton Review
Official CLEP Study Guide by the College Board

If you’ve take the CLEP Humanities exam for your college degree, let us know how it went and any pointers you might have!

Posted by Shawn Cohen

1 comment so far - Leave a comment below

I recently took the Humanities CLEP test, and passed with a score of 74. I was pleasantly surprised at my high score, since I had not prepared much for the test.

I used practice tests from books like Barron's, which were helpful, but I found the actual test to be much easier than the practice ones, at least for me!

If you have an interest in, and some knowledge of music, literature and the arts, you should not find this exam too hard.

Good luck!

— Mina Tuesday, July 7, 2009 9:53 PM CDT

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