USC placement exams should be optional
As of this month, California State University will no longer require incoming students to take math or English placement tests for college credit courses. Administrators will only take into account high school grades, Advanced Placement exam and SAT scores when deciding if students will have to take remedial classes or not.
When reading this news, USC students may think back to the summer before their freshman year when they were asked to take math and chemistry placement exams prior to orientation. These tests are only required for certain majors, but can be fairly extensive. In either case, many University students take math and science courses, so there is benefit to knowing what classes are at their level.
However, the problem is that the University notifies students of the existence of these exams in their email reminders to fill out the orientation checklist. With orientation slots spanning from early June to July, and the tests required to be taken more than a week in advance of orientation, the exams are never taken at an ideal time of year, and poor performances equate to an additional course load, which some students cannot afford.
If students have an early orientation, they need to take the tests in late May or early June. This time of year is when many high school seniors are coming out of AP and International Baccalaureate exams and still have finals and graduation requirements to worry about. Students already have a lot to do prior to graduation before they can start thinking about college. Fried brains and busy schedules make for poor test scores, which undercut the purpose of placement exams.
This situation is hardly amended by pushing the tests back. Students with later orientations are in the middle of summer vacation by the time their pre-orientation workload becomes a pressing issue. Students forget a large portion of the knowledge they attained over the school year while on summer break, and in subjects like math and chemistry — where they must remember advanced formulas —this can severely hamper placement scores.
The language placement exams are open during orientation and Welcome Week. When students take the exams at this time, they are deprived of the fun and informative activities at orientation that can help them adjust to college life, as well as chances to meet new people.
The solution is not to eliminate placement exams completely. Instead, USC should consider making them optional for the all students across all disciplines. Freshmen already have meetings with their academic advisors to devise schedule plans for registration. They could discuss the placement levels that the student’s high school grades, test scores earn them and determine whether or not they should take the exams to earn credit and test out of courses. And in addition to removing the requirement to take placement exams set up for failure, USC should offer a wider range of placement test-taking dates that give students better chances for success.
In college, students must learn to balance academics, social life, sleep, fitness and outside interests, and more universities are putting the power in their hands to do so. Deciding whether or not to take the placement exams is a freshman’s first taste of college responsibility, but it’s a choice that could do with guidance from an academic adviser. Taking end-of-the-year scores is beneficial in multiple ways. High schoolers study the entire year for the purpose of doing well on report cards and standardized exams. It only makes sense to evaluate the scores from the tests that the students are supposed to care about.
Standardized testing is a constantly evolving system that always needs improvement, but discontinuing the use of mandatory placement exams could mark a step toward making the college transition a better experience for new students.