Practice Math Placement Exam



In this section, you can practice doing the various Stony Brook math placement exam. These interactive exams are randomly generated from a large list of questions, so you can take them more than once. Please look over the instructions before you get to work.

Both of the following two virtual exams have roughly 45 questions, and are similar to the real math placement exams. Although the virtual exams cover the same material as the real exams, you may find the questions to be slightly harder (or perhaps easier!) when you actually take the placement exam.

* the exam on parts I and II (Algebra and Precalculus)
* the exam on parts II and III (Precalculus and Calculus)

If you wish to review specific topics, you can take an exam on just one part of the syllabus. Each of the following exams has 20 to 25 questions. However, each time you take one, you should get a different set of questions.

* Questions from part I only (Algebra).
* Questions from part II only (Precalculus).
* Questions from part IIIa only (Differential Calculus).
* Questions from part IIIb only (Integral Calculus).
* Questions from part IIIc only (Applications of Integration).
* Questions from part IIId only (Infinite Series & Elementary Differential Equations).

In addition to these interactive exams, there is a shorter 35 question

* exam which you can print out.
This exam covers parts I, II, and III, but is not interactive (now how would we do that?) and has the answers included. Because it is in PDF format, you will need to have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you don't have the Acrobat Reader, we have included an uglier, but still printable, non-PDF version.

Instructions for using the practice placement exam

The exam runs in a java applet. If you leave the applet -- say by clicking on one of the navigation tabs on the right edge of the notebook -- you will lose all your completed work: it will not be saved.

The exam is multiple choice with answers appearing in boxes beneath the questions. To select an answer, click on its box. Notice how the border of a selected answer differs from those which are unselected.

You can change your mind once you have selected an answer. To choose a different solution, click on the appropriate box. To return all answers to the unselected mode, click on the "Clear Answer" button in the toolbar which appears above the question.

The toolbar also has buttons for moving between questions. Selecting an answer does not move you to the next question. To move to the next question, click the "Next Question" button. You can also return to old questions by using the "Previous Question" button. (Yes, there is a certain logic to this.)

You can see which part of the syllabus you are working on by looking at the right hand edge of the toolbar. The left edge tells you how many questions there are from this part of the syllabus, and which question you are currently working on.

When you have completed working on the exam, click the "Grade Exam" button in the center of the toolbar.

Once the exam has been graded, you will be presented information on a section by section basis. You will be told if you have passed or failed each section, and how many questions in each section you answered correctly. You will be given the opportunity to go back and redo those questions you answered incorrectly -- again either on a section by section basis, or for the entire exam.

You will not receive a placement score, or an overall pass/fail grade.




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