Finding Your Place

When Columbia reconvenes at the start of the next academic year, new students will face the perennial challenge of assessing their science and language proficiency in preparation for course registration. Students often have difficulty deciding where to enter calculus and language sequences, or whether to skip introductory courses with whose material they are already familiar. The University’s departments should offer online placement tests so students are better equipped to make these decisions.

During the New Student Orientation Program, incoming students are often confused by available course offerings. The physics and chemistry departments each offer optional examinations for students interested in skipping introductory courses. The mathematics department has no such exam, though in the past it has held a brief informational lecture in Roone Arledge Auditorium to advise students about the four-semester calculus sequence. While these assessment tools are better than nothing, most of them come at a time when incoming students are preoccupied with their first few days on campus and have more immediate concerns than figuring out which science class to register for. Similarly, though Columbia’s language departments invite students to take placement exams, some departments offer exams only infrequently, and—with the notable exception of Spanish—placement exams are generally offered in person.

Following the lead of the Spanish department, academic departments throughout the University should provide online placement tests so students can gauge their preparedness on their own time. Online exams would save students’ and administrators’ time, reduce paperwork, and allow students to plan their schedules well in advance of the start of each semester. It is insufficient for a department to hold a single lecture or exam during NSOP, when upperclassmen are not yet on campus and new students are otherwise engaged. The math department’s Web site is particularly unhelpful—its guidelines merely link recommended calculus courses to Advanced Placement scores. Acknowledging that, despite these guidelines, students are frequently unsure of which course to take, the department tersely responds that “these are guidelines only, but they are based on years of experience.” An online calculus exam would go a long way toward addressing students’ uncertainty.

To be sure, where high scores on placement tests qualify students for exemption from curricular requirements, prudence dictates that such tests be proctored in person. The Spanish department sensibly insists upon a follow-up, in-person test only when a student scores sufficiently well on the online test to fulfill the language requirement outright. Nonetheless, while in-person tests are a necessary precaution against cheating when exemptions are at stake, they are cumbersome and antiquated when students are free to heed or ignore the scores they receive. Since there is hardly a concern that students will cheat on mathematics or physics exams intended for self-assessment, there should be no academic objection to moving placement exams online.

A battery of online tests would help first-years and returning students alike navigate course listings that leave much to the imagination. Whether placement exams are absent altogether or are simply offered at inopportune times, students are currently left to gamble on courses that might prove too hard or too easy. Science and language departments should aim to have online diagnostic exams in place before orientation this fall, lest the next batch of incoming students be equally ill informed about introductory course choices.