Just finished first year! Advice for 2014ers

JHS
Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:56:47 +0000

Well, my son told me that the Latin placement test consisted of three short paragraphs – 2-3 sentences each. The first was simple – anyone who had passed 1st year Latin could do a good job. The second was basically at the level of Cicero, stuff he was familiar with. The third was the hardest thing he had ever seen; he was completely unfamiliar with the grammar, and there was lots of vocabulary he didn’t know. He knew where he would place by looking at the test.

Phuriku and others have described the math placement test. It’s a little bit longer, but not that much – maybe 40 questions, and three proofs. But I think the theory is the same: Easy if you know it, “huh?” if you don’t, little gray area.

The perfect placement test would have x questions, and for any particular student x-y questions would be easy as pie, 1 question would be challenging, and y-1 questions would be impossible.