Placement Test Information

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• External Tests:
  • External Tests are tests that generally are taken prior to a student being admitted to IUPUI. These tests include Advanced Placement (AP), CLEP, Dantes, and several others.
  • External tests may or may not grant credit for IU courses depending upon the test score and the articulation rules in place. This site does not pertain to External Tests, but instead covers "Internal Tests".
• Internal Tests:
  • Internal Tests are placement tests administered by the IUPUI Testing Center. Internal Test results indicate which course(s) a student should initially register for.
  • Areas tested include MATH, English (including English as a Second Language), Foreign Language, and a few others. Certain Internal Test results articulate to one or more "pseudo courses" that can serve as prerequisites for MATH and English courses.
• Test IDs & Test Components:
  • When a student completes his/her placement test(s), each result is entered into the SIS database and associated with a Test Component that is attached to the Test ID.
  • A Test ID identifies the type of test that was taken. For example AP identifies the Advanced Placement test. All IUPUI Internal Tests (placement tests) are identified by the test ID "PLTIN". PLT indicates placement test and IN identifies the IUPUI campus. The placement Test ID at the Bloomington campus is "PLTBL" and all other campuses follow this same naming convention.
  • A placement test score relates to a specific Test Component. Each Test Component is attached to a Test ID. Examples of Test Components are MA601, MA602, EN101, etc. The score each student achieves for a specific Test ID / Test Component combination indicates proper course placement for the student. A Test ID/Test Component example is: PLTIN MA603. All Test Components along with proper course placements can be found on the above "Tests" links.
• Pseudo Courses:
  • As stated above, certain tests results (not all) articulate to a pseudo course. The pseudo course then serves as the prerequisite for the course the student "tested into". Test scores that are NOT used to block registration do NOT articulate to pseudo courses.
  • Pseudo courses are in the "Course Catalog", but carry zero (0) credit hours and cannot be scheduled.
  • Pseudo courses follow a specific naming convention. For example "TEST-IN 99MATH06" is one pseudo course used at IUPUI. TEST-IN is the subject and 99MATH06 is the course number.
    • The TEST-IN subject indicates that course is the result of a placement test taken at IUPUI (IN). This prevents students and advisors from confusing pseudo courses with "real" courses.
    • The 99MATH06 course number is used to indicate the student placed into MATH level 06 while the 99 is used because no real course begins with those two digits. This again makes a pseudo course easily identifiable from a real course.
  • Course placement may be determined by either the raw test score or the pseudo course (if one is present).
  • Pseudo courses also have a course description that indicates the level of placement.