As an incoming student in the Rutgers-Camden College of Arts and Sciences, either a first-year or a transfer, you must take a placement test in German, French, or Spanish.
Placement testing is now online. Access to the Placement test: HERE
- Once in the website, select the language (French, German or Spanish) you would like to be tested in.
- Technical notes: The placement site seems to respond better when the browsers Safari or Chrome are used (vs. Firefox).
Why do we require placement testing? Because the point of the Arts and Sciences language requirement is to make sure that you improve your abilities in the language you choose. It’s not just to make you jump through one more hoop. If you have no ability at all to use a foreign language, you should graduate with some abilities. If you have some ability to use another language, you should graduate with more advanced abilities than you had when you started. The requirement is one course at the Elementary II (usually 102) level or above. If you had one of our languages in school, you probably don’t need to start with 101. You might go straight into 102, or you might start your Rutgers Camden language experience with take a course at some level above Elementary (one course is required, but naturally we hope you will take more).
One more point about placement testing. Many students ask some variety of this question: “I thought I did terribly on the test, but I still placed into a level that I think will be too hard for me. Can’t I just start over with 101, please?” The answer is nearly always “no.” Please remember, the placement test is not like other tests. It’s not as if you were taking a 101 final to see if you are ready for 102, and should expect to get 80% or 90% of the questions right. The test has material on it that you might cover in 101, and material that you might cover in a third or fourth-year college course. And remember, too, that being ready for Intermediate I, for example, does not mean that you already know everything that will be covered in Intermediate I. You might miss all the third and fourth-year level questions and most of the Intermediate level questions, and what would that mean? It would mean that you are ready for Intermediate!