Preparing for Your Test

Student Testing

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."  

-Benjamin Franklin

You should prepare for your placement tests. They determine where you can begin your course of study. It is important to brush up on material you have mastered in the past so that you do not unnecessarily add to the length of time it will take to reach your educational goals.

Preparing For The Mathematics Tests

All students will begin with Next Generation ACCUPLACER Quantitative Reasoning, Algebra, and Statistics (QAS).  The test is adaptive. Meaning, if you do very well on the QAS test you will automatically advance to the Advanced Algebra and Functions test. The results of these two tests will place you somewhere between Intermediate Algebra and Calculus. If you don’t do as well on QAS, you will automatically go on to the Arithmetic test and be placed somewhere between Arithmetic and College Algebra.

Online math review resources: 

Preparing For The English Tests

The English test includes Next Generation ACCUPLACER Reading and Writing tests.

Reading contains 20-25 questions designed to measure how well you understand what you read.  Some questions will include reading passages of various lengths and a series of questions about the content in the passage. Other questions will require the tester to read two sentences and answer a question regarding the relationship of these two sentences.

Writing includes 20-25 questions.  Sentence correction questions ask you to choose a word or phrase to substitute for an underlined portion of a sentence. Construction shift questions ask that a sentence be rewritten in a specific way without changing the meaning.

Online English review resources:

Preparing for the ESOL Test

Testing is available for students whose native language is not English through the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Program. Testing for students who would like to take classes in the ESOL Program consists of a 75 multiple choice questions. This test is taken on the computer. The test measures knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary. The purpose is to evaluate English. This is a timed test of 45 minutes.

The best way to be ready for the ESOL placement test is to listen, speak, read, and write in English every day. Study of vocabulary and grammar in context may also be helpful. Useful materials include books, newspapers, magazines, films, and TV. There are many helpful websites available on the ESOL Program resources page.

Testing is done by appointment only at the Brighton campus.