How Exams Are Scored
About scoring CLEP exams
Students' scores are provided to them onscreen immediately upon completion of an exam. The only exception to instant scoring is the English Composition with Essay, for which results are sent two to three weeks after the test date. Essay scoring takes place twice a month (see the scoring information for English Composition with Essay).
Who does the scoring?
- Multiple-choice exams are scored by computer.
- Essays written for the English Composition with Essay exam are graded by college English professors, who are carefully selected by the College Board from the faculty of two- and four-year institutions. These professors, known as faculty consultants, receive extensive training in essay scoring and thoroughly review the College Board scoring policies and procedures before grading the essays. Each essay is read and graded by two or more faculty consultants. That grade is combined with the multiple-choice score and the result is reported as a scaled score.
- Optional essays for CLEP Freshman College Composition and Literature exams are evaluated and graded by the colleges that require them, rather than by ETS or the College Board. A student's optional essay is sent with a copy of his/her score report (which includes only the results of the multiple-choice test) to the institution he/she has designated in the testing software as a score recipient.
Computing scores
In order to reach the total score that students see on their score reports, two calculations are performed.
- The "raw score" is calculated. This is the number of questions answered correctly. The raw score increases by one point for each question answered correctly, and no points are gained or lost when a question is not answered or is answered incorrectly.
- The raw score is converted into a "scaled score" by a statistical process called equating. Equating maintains the consistency of standards for test scores over time by adjusting for slight differences in difficulty between test forms. This ensures that the score does not depend on the specific test form a student took or how well others did on the same form. The raw score is converted to a scaled score that ranges from 20, the lowest, to 80, the highest. The final scaled score is the score that appears on the score report.