How To Pass CLU Exams

Over the last 120 days, I have passed five (5) courses in the Chartered Life Underwriter program with The American College.  Each of these come with a six hundred page (600pp) textbook and titles like Planning for Business Owners; Life Insurance Law; Planning for Retirement Needs; Fundamentals of Estate Planning; and Investments.

My first three classes took me nine months to complete.  Then, I realized that I only really studied the last three weeks before the test so I decided to ramp up and take the courses back-to-back-to-back.  Here is how I studied and passed all of the tests on the first try.  (3 A's and 2 B's)

1.  Read the book.  In addition to trying to stay interested, work on your speed reading.  Just power through it. 

2.  Take the on-line T/F tests at the end of each chapter.  Score yourself but DO NOT focus on which ones you got right and wrong. 

3.  Sitting in front of the computer while you are doing something else (playing poker for play money chips worked for me), cut and paste all the T/F questions and the answers with the explanations into a database or spreadsheet.  When you are done copying all the questions you will have around 350 questions. 

4.  Now, randomize the order and answer all the T/F questions again.  This time, when you are going through them and before if you check if you got it wright or wrong, mark the hard questions with an "X" in a seperate field or cell.  This is the heart of my strategy.  Spend your time only on the quesitons that you find "hard". 

5.  Score yourself and mark the ones you got wrong with a "Y".  You end up with around 100 questions (and answers- with explanation) that are hard or you got wrong.  You can check which chapters they came from and you should go back and re-read and review if you are not over 75% in any chapter. 

6.  Memorize the questions that you missed or marked as "hard".

7.  Take the on-line Exam Simulations.  You don't have to cut and paste these as you can print them and (at least one of them) is re-printed in the course materials or textbook.

8.  The Exams themselves are made up of three distinct sections: 

1. Which of the following four statements is TRUE 
2. What of the above TWO statements are TRUE?  A Only, B Only, A & B, Neither A or B.
3. Which of the following four statements is FALSE?

All of these questions can be reduced to T/F questions.  So what you really have, instead of 100 multiple choice questions are 330 individual T/F questions. 

Here is may main test taking strategy:  Don't let the format of the test throw you off- just treat every quesiton as a set of T/F questions.  Once you mark each one T or F, just calmly go back and remind yourself what section of the test you are on and make the right selection.

BE VERY CAREFUL not to memorize the T/F questions themselves.  That is why I recommend NOT looking at the answers the first time through.  If you do this, you wil get questions wrong on the test because you will have memorized that, "The sky is blue," is true and the test will say, "The sky is not blue."  The test authors do this A LOT- so be careful.

This may seem like a lot of work but I found it to be worthwhile.  I actually learned A LOT from these studies and it is helping me tremendously at work.  I figure that the total time I spent on each course is about 40 hours. 

You may also hear about "Keir" books.  I did buy one of them for the Investments course and it helped but if you use this system, you won't need to go to that additional expense and spend the time reading them.

I would love to hear your comments.  Thanks,  Chris

Comments

[Mike]

Chris-
Thank you very much for the tips! it's taken me 9 months to get passed the retirement class, if only I saw your post on the american college website sooner! Any more suggestions for us busy advisors trying to get the CFP coursework done?

[Bren]

Makes sense. Thanks.

[Derek McCoy]

Chris,

Thanks for the post. I'm currently going for the ChFC. I'm working on my first course and what you said about creating a question data base is awesome. Thanks a lot!

[Patti Taylor]

Hey Chris -

How long did it take you to read the HS 324 book? I know that alone took me 40 hours.

I am taking my test Wednesday so your tips won't help me on this test, but the next one I will try them.

Also, thanks for the tip on memorizing the "The sky is blue," rather than "The sky is not blue." I know they have done that in the past, but I will be extra careful.

Wish me luck. Patti, Dallas Texas

[Blayne Gale]

Great strategy. I power through the book and start the essay questions along with the T/F questions. I then find my weak areas to read again. I then hit the sample 100 question test. Same process. The last 3 days before the test I hit the word defininitions. Has worked for 12 courses.