What’s on the Tests

ACCUPLACER measures key skills needed for academic and workforce success. The suite of assessments include reading, writing, math, ESL, essay and local test options. ACCUPLACER provides a highly flexible solution that institutions can adapt to meet their unique placement needs by allowing users to integrate test combinations and placement rules. Explore Inside the Tests to learn more.

Inside the Tests

Reading Test

The Reading test assesses the test taker’s ability to derive meaning from a range of texts and to determine the meaning of words and phrases in short and extended contexts. Passages on the test cover a range of content areas, writing modes, and complexities. Both single and paired passages are included. The Reading test assesses four broad knowledge and skills categories:

Information and Ideas
Rhetoric
Synthesis
Vocabulary

Writing Test

The Writing test evaluates a test taker’s ability to revise and edit multiparagraph text. Questions cover two broad knowledge and skills categories, each containing three subcategories:

The Expression of Ideas category covers development, organization, and effective language use.
The Standard English Conventions category covers sentence structure, usage, and punctuation.

Math Tests

The Arithmetic test focuses on computation, order of operations, estimation and rounding, comparing and ordering values in different formats, and recognizing equivalent values across formats. This test assesses the following knowledge and skills categories:

Whole Number Operations
Fraction Operations
Decimal Operations
Percent
Number Comparisons and Equivalents

The Quantitative Reasoning, Algebra, and Statistics (QAS) test assesses the following knowledge and skills:

Rational numbers
Ratio and Proportional Relationships
Exponents
Algebraic Expressions
Linear Equations
Linear Applications and Graphs
Probability Sets
Descriptive Statistics
Geometry Concepts

The Advanced Algebra and Functions (AAF) test assesses the following knowledge and skills:

Linear Equations
Linear Applications and Graphs
Factoring
Quadratics
Functions
Radical and Rational Equations
Polynomial Equations
Exponential and Logarithmic Equations
Trigonometry

WritePlacer Essay

In addition to the multiple-choice tests, ACCUPLACER offers WritePlacer. You can use WritePlacer and WritePlacer ESL scores in conjunction with other ACCUPLACER test scores to assist with the placement of test takers into college-level, developmental, and/or English as a second language courses. WritePlacer automatically evaluates test takers’ essays written to one of several prompts provided in the ACCUPLACER system. Students enter their essays into an onscreen text box and submit for a score.

Tests for English Language Learners

ACCUPLACER ESL helps place English learners in appropriate language courses. Developed as an assessment tool for ESL students and English as a foreign language (EFL) students, it consists of five components: Sentence Meaning, Language Use, Reading Skills, Listening, and WritePlacer ESL.