Placement Tests Placement tests serve to adapt the needs and backgrounds of individual students to the College curriculum. They place entering students at the proper level of study in a given subject and may be used to award academic credit where appropriate. On the one hand, placement tests minimize the repetition of subjects already mastered and, on the other, they reduce the possibility that students might begin their programs with courses for which they are inadequately prepared.
Placement tests measure skill in problem solving as well as general knowledge in a subject field.
Students who have some background in the areas being tested are urged to review it, but incoming students without such knowledge are not expected to acquire it over the summer preceding entrance. Over the summer, information that describes these tests in detail is sent to all incoming first-year and transfer students. Mathematics Placement Test and Calculus Placement Test. Every student must take either the mathematics placement test or the calculus placement test during Orientation. Students with no knowledge of calculus should take the mathematics placement test.