Self Administered Placement Evaluation

The self-administered Chemistry Placement Evaluation is designed to help you decide which chemistry course to begin with: Chemistry 122 An Introduction to Chemistry; or Chemistry 123 or 128, Principles of Chemistry or Principles of Environmental Chemistry. Students who earned a score of 3 or greater on the AP chemistry exam, or 4 or greater on the IB chemistry exam, automatically place into CHEM123 or CHEM128 and do not need to take this placement exam to enroll into those courses (though they are welcome to if they wish). Students who did not take the AP or IB chemistry exams, or did not earn the above scores, must take the placement exam and achieve the minimum score given in the score table to enroll in CHEM123 or CHEM128.

The evaluation contains 20 multiple choice problems. There are two sections, 10 questions that evaluate your chemistry knowledge and 10 questions that evaluate your quantitative skills. Feel free to use a calculator and scrap paper, and consult a chemistry book, for working out these problems. We don't expect you to have immediate recall of the chemistry you have learned, so it is entirely appropriate to consult a reference and review ahead of time. After you work through the problems the first time, your score will be reported and you will have the opportunity to take the test a second time, if you'd like. If you are happy with your first score, you don't need to repeat the questions.

We recommend that you take some time to go over the topics below before you take the exam, and this link goes to an online textbook that you can use to help you review. Please feel free to contact any faculty member in the department to discuss your score after taking the test.

Follow these steps to take the self-administered Chemistry Placement Evaluation:

  1. Prepare for the exam by reviewing some relevant topics and trying a couple review exam questions: Review Topics and Exam Questions
  2. Take the placement examination. You will need to log in using your Carleton username and password: Self-Administered Chemistry Placement Evaluation
  3. Your placement is determined according to the score table below: Score Table