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Information on the Accuplacer Math Placement Examination

This page is maintained to provide accurate information about the Accuplacer Exam which the Department of Mathematics uses for placement into its classes. For more details about placement, please visit the Math Department's Quantitative Placement Guide.

• The Accuplacer Exam is a nationally recognized standardized exam produced by the College Board. (The College Board is the same organization which produces the SAT and AP exams.) See the College Board's webpage for more details.




• Every higher educational institution in the state of Utah administers the Accuplacer exam and places students in math courses based on Accuplacer performance. In particular, the use of the Accuplacer is not new, nor is its use specific to the University of Utah.




• Didn't score as high on the Accuplacer as you expected? You may retake it as often as you'd like. The only requirement is that you wait at least one week before retaking the exam. In between retakes, a wealth of preparatory materials is available to students including our Refresher Boot Camp Workshops. (See our Undergraduate FAQ pages for more information.) A casual Google search turns up many practice exams. There are even apps available for mobile devices to review and prepare for the Accuplacer.

  
  

• The Accuplacer is an untimed exam. You may take as long as you would like to complete it.




• The Accuplacer is a dynamic exam. The exam unfolds adaptively to identify your strengths and weaknesses. If a student does well on the initial 12 Elementary Algebra questions, the remaining 20 questions are devoted to College Level Math.

  
  For example, the total possible score on the College Level Math section is 120. We currently require (as does Utah State University, for example) a score of 95 out of 120 (or 79%) for placement into Calculus 1210 at the U.




• Eight of the nine public institutions in the PAC-12 exclusively use scores on a dynamic exam (like the Accuplacer) or AP scores for placement into Calculus. Thus the placement policies in the Math Department at the U closely mirror the policies of other PAC-12 institutions.




• The implementation of the Accuplacer exam in 2011 led to highly skewed and unreliable data. For example, some students who planned to place into math courses on the basis of their AP Calculus scores were required to take the Accuplacer exam. Many of these students realized that their performance on the Accuplacer was irrelevant, and completed the exam in a matter of minutes and scored very low. This led to highly skewed data, for example among students who placed into Calculus by means of their AP scores. For this reason, such data are to be considered unreliable. Such problems are being addressed by a cross-campus committee and will be corrected for 2012.