Are college math placement tests hard?
I teach at a 4-year college where students routinely fail the math placement exams even if they have had an ok high school math background. (Then they complain and try to wheedle their way into the courses anyway.) They fail because they don’t bother to brush up at all. The tests are not harder than the SAT math section, which all these kids took, but they took it 8 months prior when it was all fresh in their mind. So: brush up. Remind yourself how to multiply and divide fractions. How the rules for exponents work. Remind yourself of a few of the basic algebra rules, the trig ratios, the rules for triangles (side-angle-side and the like). Work an hour or two worth of practice problems.
