Mathematics Placement

Placing into a mathematics course

There are now new placement options for mathematics courses at Purdue. Previously, ALEKS was the only placement option and you may have received information to that effect.  We recently implemented a change that created additional options for placement.  Now if you have an SAT or ACT score you may have already have met the prerequisites for your mathematics course.

Students may place by a suitable score on the math component of the SAT* or ACT, or, by ALEKS Placement Assessment into MA 13700, MA 15300, MA 15555, MA 15800, MA 16010, MA 16100, and MA 16500.  Only one of the three scores is required to place into the course.  See the table below for details.

Scores required for placement

The table below details the required score to place in a course for each of the three testing methods.  Remember only one of the three scores is required to place into the course.  You can use an ALEKS score for placement even with a lower SAT or ACT Math score.

Course	Description	SAT Math	ACT Math	ALEKS	SAT Math (prior to March 2016)
MA 13700	Mathematics For Elementary Teachers I	530	21	45	500
MA 15300	Algebra And Trigonometry I	530	21	45	500
MA 15555	Quantitative Reasoning	530	21	45	500
MA 15800	Precalculus	570	24	60	550
MA 16010	Applied Calculus I	620	26	75	600
MA 16100 MA 16500	Plane Analytic Geometry And Calculus I	670	29	85	650