CLARB practice questions seem difficult than LarePrep ones.

[MWayne12]

Has anyone done CLARB practice exam as well as the Lareprep ones?

I found out the CLARB one is more difficult with weird wording and some contents are not covered by the Lareprep Study Guide, which I am not surprised. However, the CLARB practice exam tests some very detailed knowledge. And it also tests some questions that are not covered in the recommended books (I checked the keywords and couldn't find many of them). 

For those who has done at least one section of the real LARE exam, does the CLARB practice exam  have the same level of difficulty as the real exam? 

Thank you!

[ADMIN]

Supposedly the questions from the CLARB practice exams are from previous exams. Given the recent shift to the new blueprint, it may be that CLARB is using questions from the old format, meaning that there would not be a 1:1 relationship between the practice questions and those found on the real exam. No one except CLARB knows the answer to that.

What I can say is that at least one of the questions on CLARB's practice exams had incorrect information in it and this incorrect information was directly related to CLARB's own bizarre wording. The question asked what the maximum allowable run of a ramp between landings is and the correct answer is 50 ft. CLARB's practice exam had indicated 30 ft. was the correct answer and then their feedback stated that the answer assumes the ramp has a slope of 1:12 (maximum allowable for accessibility) which is hilarious because that is never stated in the question, so there is absolutely no way to get this question correct. I have no clue what LARE candidates are supposed to do when they encounter issues like this...

[Sarah Gronquist]

This has vexed me for a long time. Federal ADA does not mention horizontal maximum distance at all. You are correct! The range of possible slopes for a ramp is 5 to 8.33%. At 5.00001% you will get 50' max length for 2.5' rise, and at 8.33% you will get 30' max length for 2.5' rise. Site Engineering for Landscape Architects touches on this but it is not clearly explained. There are many reasons you might design a ramp to be flatter than the max, including allowing for construction tolerance.

[ADMIN]

And casual searches on Google - some hits even coming from ADA consultants - will say that the maximum permissible length is 30' - so glad to see other pushing back against this oversimplification!

[justin jore]

Absolutely Not!  I took Grading and drainage, twice!  Still waiting for results of my second attempt.  Don't feel confident about this one either.  I used LARE Preps study guide and have about 85% of the material memorized.  LARE Prep's practice exams are more expensive but I feel they resemble the actual LARE exams at a more accurate level.  You also get to take the exams an endless amount of times, within the 3 months of purchase.  There are two versions to purchase.

CLARBs practice exams are a joke.  I took it the first time and received a score of 85% and yet I failed my first real exam and don't feel confident about my second attempt.  CLARB's practice exam difficult level does not accurately portray the real exams.  It's like they took the easiest questions they retired and put them in the practice exam.  You also only get to take the practice exam 3 times.

Ultimately, neither practice exam is going to be a spot on resemblance to legit exams but in my opinion the LARE Prep deserves your money.  And if you're wondering I failed my first real exam attempt by a few questions.

[Laura Robinson]

Took the IA&PM LARE this April. I exclusively used the LarePrep guide to study as well as one LarePrep practice exam and one Clarb practice exam and I passed! 

My thoughts on the study materials:

While the LarePrep practice exam was useful in helping me confirm my areas of knowledge and what I might need to focus on more while studying, I found the CLARB practice exam to be more similar to the style of questions found on the actual exam. I took the CLARB practice exam a few days before the actual exam and I think it helped me get in the mindset of the LARE trick questions. I also took an SGLA practice exam and I did not actually think those were written in a way that was useful for studying or for how questions actually appear on the exam - will skip those materials in the future.

I do know this is the easiest of the LAREs so will update again if this study method works for the more difficult LAREs.

[Vincent Yi]

Hey Laura!  hope you're doing well

I took IA&PM and Planning and Design in November and used the Lareprep study guide/practice tests and the clarb practice tests for both. I passed both and thought there was alot of overlap between the two sections.  I used Lareprep again for CD&A in April and it was less helpful than the other two. I could tell when i took the clarb practice test that the lareprep guide is missing ~20% of the material that would be in the exam. I ended up passing anyways but felt way less confident when i left the test center. 

Havent figured out a gameplan for swm & grading yet but will probably use Lareprep again and just take the Clarb practice test a little earlier in the process to make sure it covers the test material. I read somewhere that SGLA is good for this section but it's also really expensive...

to answer the op- i think the actual exam questions are worded a little better than the clarb practice exams but the same strategy applies to both in that you have to really try and figure out what the question is asking. the lareprep exam questions are way more straightforward

[Olivia Saw]

Hey there! I am planning on taking the SWM& Grading and is still deciding on which study guide to get, since there is a big sticker difference between the SGLA and LAPrep.... but actually it's still a small price to pay if you can pass it the first time you take it.... But I will have to decide soon in order to maximize my study time. In your experience, did you purchase books from the reading list apart from the LAPrep study guide you purchase? I am still trying to gather resources I can for SWM& Grading and I still have 3 more books that I would need to purchase.

Olivia