Assessment tips

Habits and emotional responses that you've learned in over a dozen years of test-taking aren't going to suddenly vanish, but keep in mind that your ALEKS assessment is very different from most other tests. Here are few pointers for getting an accurate ALEKS assessment.

Take your time

You have 48 hours to complete each placement assessment. If you don't complete your assessment within 48 hours, no big deal -  just start a new one later. Incomplete assessments don't count towards your total of five placement assessments. 

Take a break

If you feel impatient or stressed, take a break and come back when you're ready to slog through some more problems. Get up, walk around, swear and make obscene gestures at your computer, get some sleep, listen to some upbeat music, have a snack, ... do whatever helps you to settle your nerves and regain your concentration.  Most students spend roughly a total of two hours actively working on their assessment, and you have 48 hours from the time you start to the time ALEKS will declare "time's up", so don't power through in a single sitting unless you're comfortable doing that. 

Don’t answer “I don’t know” unless you really don't know what to do 

ALEKS allows you to click an "I don't know" button as your response to a question. Don't use this option unless you don't have a clue how to even start the problem. In particular, don't use it to skip over a problem you don't like or don't have the patience for at the moment. Here's why: ALEKS will believe you. If you skip over a problem, ALEKS won't offer you any problems that build on material tested in that problem. This can leave some huge holes in your pie.

Don’t skip the word problems

If you answer "I don't know" because you don't like word problems, ALEKS may conclude that you don't know anything about the mathematics used in the problem. Most of us will immediately classify a particular kind of problem as a "word problem", but ALEKS will see it as, for example, a linear equation problem, and will conclude that you don't know anything about linear equations if you don't attempt to answer the problem. If you hate word problems, take a break or take a deep breath, and then bite the bullet.

DIY

While you're taking your assessment, resist the temptation to Google that trig identity or ask your roommate to remind you how side-angle-side works. You'll have ample opportunity between assessments to brush up on material that you almost, but not quite, remember. ALEKS will assign you a Learning Module based on your initial assessment, and it's in your interest to get the Module that's the best fit to your actual current skills. Hopefully by the time you reassess, you'll have enough confidence in ALEKS and yourself to tackle the assessment on your own, knowing that you can continue to fill in any remaining weak spots.

Enter your answers carefully

The system for entering your answers will probably feel very awkward at first, but you have a lot of time in which to complete the assessment. The unfamiliarity of the interface may be particularly stressful or exasperating because you're used to being in a hurry when you take a test - if you're accustomed to one hour exams, spending five minutes figuring out how to plot a circle may seem like a huge delay, but five minutes out of 48 hours isn't really that big a deal. If you've solved the problem correctly, you don't want to lose some or all of the credit to a typo.  The same reasoning applies to reading carefully, too!