Placement Exam Study Guide and Practice Exam

The aim of the Mathematics Placement Exam is to assess your current Math knowledge. Most students benefit from reviewing any topics they have not studied in the past three months (especially algebra and geometry). Take the practice exam to determine which topics you need to review. Do not try to study topics you have never learned.

The topic areas that are covered by the test are:

• Arithmetic operations
• Polynomials
• Linear equations and inequalities
• Quadratic equations
• Graphing
• Rational expressions
• Exponents and square roots
• Geometric measurement
• Word problems

Review/Study Guides

You can review the topics listed above by checking out the textbook Precalculus by Cohen, available at both the McHenry and Science libraries.

Check out the website http://www.conceptsapplications.com for help or review on a specific subject area on the Placement Exam.

There is a set of nine videos on Precalculus available from McHenry Library (Call#VT4730), developed by Professor Ed Landesman, which is extremely helpful in reviewing Precalculus before the Placement Exam.

Schaum's Outline for Elementary Algebra is an excellent resource for more practice problems. (Published by McGraw-Hill, ISBN:070522626)

Practice Exam

Run a practice "Calculus Readiness Test" at the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Program web site. At the end, you see your total score and your score by topic. You also have an opportunity to review your performance on each question. Use these results to help you choose which topics to study for the placement exam.

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