Bryn Mawr College

Placement Exams and Advanced Placement

 

Placement Assessments

In most cases, you can tell whether you’re eligible to take a course at Bryn Mawr or Haverford by consulting the course description. If the course is a 100-level course and there are no prerequisites, you can usually assume that you are eligible to take it.  But some departments require you to complete a placement assessment in order to demonstrate your readiness to enroll in certain courses. To access some of these assessments (those offered by the Departments of Math, Chemistry, French and German), you will need to register for Moodle, our on-line course management system.  Please note that although all entering students have been enrolled in all of these Moodle exams, you should take only those exams appropriate to your particular situations.   Please take exams only in the subjects you plan to study.

Register for Moodle here

 

Summer Placement Assessments

All entering students must take the college’s Quantitative Readiness Assessment.  You will receive an email with a link to the assessment on or around June 3.  Please set aside two hours to take it before July 8.

All students interested in taking courses taught by the Department of Mathematics, the Department of Chemistry, the Department of French, the Department of German, the Department of Italian and the Department of Spanish—this fall or at any time in the future—must review the instructions and, in most cases, complete on-line assessments during the summer.  To access each assessment, click on the link:

MATH DEPARTMENT INSTRUCTIONS & ASSESSMENT (June 3 to July 8).

CHEMISTRY DEPARTMENT INSTRUCTIONS & ASSESSMENT (3 to July 8).

FRENCH DEPARTMENT INSTRUCTIONS & ASSESSMENT (June 3 to July 8).

GERMAN DEPARTMENT INSTRUCTIONS & ASSESSMENT (June 3 to July 8).

ITALIAN DEPARTMENT INSTRUCTIONS & ASSESSMENT  (June 3 to July 8).

SPANISH DEPARTMENT INSTRUCTIONS & ASSESSMENT (June 3 to July 8).

 

Advanced Placement Information

Some students enter Bryn Mawr with credit for honors scores in the Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate or A-level examinations. Tables which indicate the scores for which Bryn Mawr awards credit for the AP exams are at

http://www.brynmawr.edu/registrar/students/APTestScores.html

 and for the  IB and A levels at

http://www.brynmawr.edu/registrar/students/IB_ALevels.html

AP, IB and A-levels may be used by advisers and faculty for placement into Bryn Mawr courses. Please note that AP, IB and A-level scores and credit do not fulfill the Quantitative Methods or Foreign Language requirements, nor do they meet the Approaches to Inquiry.

 

Other Placement Information

Specific information about placement procedures for individual foreign languages can be found on our Guide to Language Placement.

First-year students who are interested in Physics should take PHYS 121 and PHYS 122, for which Calculus I and II (Math 101 and 102) are co-requisites.  Because these courses are not the equivalent of AP or IB physics courses, you will not lose AP / IB credit for taking them.  If you are interested in a pre-professional program that requires two physics courses at college, you may take PHYS 121 and PHYS 122 as a freshman or sophomore, or PHYS 101 and 102 as a sophomore, junior or senior.  If you remain unsure or want to pursue the possibility of starting with a higher level course, please contact the Physics Undergraduate Adviser, Professor Mark Matlin (mmatlin@brynmawr.edu) this summer or at the academic fair during Customs Week. 

First-year students interested in Biology should enroll in the Bio 110-111 sequence of semester courses titled Biological Explorations; students can begin the sequence with either Bio110 (fall) or Bio111 (spring). The Biology Department strongly recommends that students interested in pursuing a major in Biology take both semesters of Biological Explorations. However, a student may choose to opt out of one semester of Bio 110-111 if she earned a 5 on the AP Biology exam or an equivalent score on the International Baccalaureate exam. Students choosing this option must consult the Biology faculty at the Academic Fair to decide which semester course is best suited to their academic needs and plans. There are no other options for placing out of the Bio 110-111 sequence. Please note that placement out of one semester of Biological Explorations does not satisfy the Biological Explorations prerequisite for 200/300-level biology courses.

The Economics Department will waive the Econ 105 prerequisite for students who score a 5 on both the Microeconomics and Macroeconomics AP exams.  A score of 6 or 7 on the Economics Higher Level Exam of the International Baccalaureate also permits a waiver.  The waiver does not count as course credit toward the major or minor; majors and minors receiving advanced placement must still take a total of 10 and 6 courses in economics, respectively. Students qualifying for advanced placement should talk with the Economics representative at the Academic Fair during Customs Week about obtaining approval for the waiver and for advice on planning their coursework in economics.

Similarly, students who score a 5 on the Psychology AP exam are eligible to enroll in 200-level psychology courses.