This page will give basic information on placement into math courses at NLU.

All students admitted to on-campus undergraduate programs take a quantitative reasoning skills exam, or math placement exam. This is strongly urged before advising and registration. There are two advantages to this. One is that a student who is not satisfied with his/her placement has time to do something about improving the score on the exam, either by extra study or by taking an additional mathematics course either during the school year or the summer. A second advantage is that the time at advising or registration normally allotted to testing can be used for other purposes. Sample questions are available for review purposes at the Center for Academic Development (see link below).  Students are urged to answer these questions without a calculator before taking the math placement exam, and check his/her answers using the answer key provided. The results may be used for guidance purposes, to indicate if additional review is necessary in order to improve his/her score on the actual math placement exam. Generally the math placement exam is allowed to be taken only once.

A student's score on the actual math placement exam is intended to warn a student away from getting into a course that is well beyond his/her present capabilities. Experience over a long period of time has shown that if a student attempts a course higher than the placement score indicates is appropriate, then a low grade and quite possibly a failing grade is a VERY LIKELY OUTCOME. This experience has caused the Math Department to require that students register only for the courses recommended for their placement score, regardless of a student's prior coursework.

Students who do not take the mathematics placement exam prior to advising or registration will be required to take it in any case, later on. It should be noted that this often occurs after a student has been misplaced into a math course, at a higher level than his/her present capabilities. Students are therefore urged to take the math placement exam as soon as possible, after any necessary review, to allow time in case extra study is necessary to achieve skills in computation and basic mathematics.

Students who need to develop skills in computation and basic mathematics must enroll in developmental courses LAM100A (Prealgebra) and LAM100B (Basic Algebra).

Further details about the placement exam may be obtained from the office of the Center for Academic Development (CAD), at (312) 621-9650, ext. 3373, or by contacting any of the Department faculty.