How long should I expect to spend in an assessment?

The assessment duration varies from student to student.  Students typically spend  total of 90-120 minutes in an assessment. An assessment usually includes 30 questions;

What will be on the test?

ALEKS assesses mastery of a comprehensive set of skills ranging from basic arithmetic up to precalculus, including trigonometry. Questions cover material selected from a long list of topics from across the curriculum, and the first few questions may be too easy or too hard for you. You may be asked a few questions about material you haven’t studied yet.  ALEKS is an adaptive system, so the selection of questions you’re asked will be guided by the answers you’ve given to earlier questions. As the assessment proceeds, ALEKS uses your responses to construct a model of your “knowledge space”, and adapts the questioning to refine and validate that model. This process resembles an oral exam or job interview: ALEKS won’t spend much time on topics you apparently either understand very well or don’t know at all, reserving most of the questions for material for which you have incomplete mastery. By the end of the assessment, the questions should be challenging but feasible – ALEKS will be pinpointing the frontiers of your knowledge space.

Click here for a list of all the topics on the ALEKS placement exam.

What if I’m not sure about my answer?

It is appropriate to answer “I don’t know” if you have no idea how to tackle a problem. However, if you do have some familiarity with the content of a question, you should do your best to answer the question, even if you’re not confident about your answer. Roughly speaking, ALEKS interprets “I don’t know” as “I don’t know where to even begin with this”, so if you respond with “I don’t know” unless you’re certain that you have a completely correct solution, ALEKS may underestimate your current knowledge and skills. Half right/half wrong solutions can be very helpful in forming an accurate assessment, since ALEKS’s adaptive algorithm homes in on topics that you’ve partially mastered. If you’re wobbly on something, ALEKS will include that material in your learning module, but make it available to you early on, since you’ve shown that you already have familiarity with it and probably just need some review.

Should I review before taking the placement test?

You don’t need to review any material in preparation for your first assessment. However, if you would like to refresh your math skills before taking your first assessment, you could look over the test topic list to find skills to review. There are many great online resources for reviewing your math skills, here is a short list of resources we have found useful. Do not feel that you need to know all of the material on the topic list, especially those from courses you’ve never taken. ALEKS will adapt its choices of questions as you progress through your assessment, posing questions that push the boundaries of your mathematical mastery and avoiding topics that you seem to be unfamiliar with.

When you review on your own it can be hard to self-assess what you are actually proficient in when the content is familiar. You might accidentally skip over familiar material not realizing you have forgotten the correct procedures. ALEKS is designed to identify the concepts you have worked with before, but are a little rusty on or may not have entirely mastered, and help you review them in the learning module. ‘Cramming’ for your assessment won’t have much effect – a lot of theory and experience have gone into ALEKS’s adaptive algorithm, and it’s gotten to be very good at distinguishing rote memorization from conceptual understanding.

May I use a calculator?

ALEKS provides a calculator when it is needed. Some questions require a calculator, while others are meant to be answered without one. To get an accurate assessment result, you should use the calculator only as intended by ALEKS.