Placement Testing and Exams

Placement exams are offered three times a year: summer, fall, and spring.

The full array of placement exams are offered in the summer; a small subset of the departments and programs that offer summer placement exams also offers fall and spring placement exams.

Therefore, students seeking a placement for the coming academic year are advised to take a summer placement exam.

Summer online placement exams open at 9 a.m. on July 1, 2025, and close at noon on July 31, 2025. 

The Placement Exam and Information  page on the the Yale College Website is the clearing house for placement exam information, including who should take the exams, where to find them, and how results are delivered.

Separately, some information about summer online language placement exams is also available on the Center for Language Study’s website, and many departments post information on their websites.

Do I Need to Take a Summer Placement Exam: Rules of Thumb for Incoming First-year Students

  • Nearly two dozen departments and programs offer summer placement exams. Take the placement exam in any field in which you plan to take a course during your first year at Yale
  • Take the biology, chemistry, and math placement exams if you are planning to apply to medical school or major in any of the biological sciences, chemistry, or related fields in engineering. 
  • Take a placement exam, if offered, in any language you’ve already studied in high school or in which you have some proficiency
  • Skip the placement exams for fields in which you won’t take a course during your first year at Yale
  • If you decide to study in those fields during your second year here, you may take a placement test next summer.  Are you afraid you’ll be rusty?  Even so, that will be a more accurate placement than one provided by a year-old placement test
  • What if you change your mind and wish to take a course during spring term?  While some departments or programs — currently, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Math, Portuguese, Spanish, and Ukrainian — offer fall and spring placement exams  ahead of registration for the following term, many more, including biology and chemistry, do not. Therefore, the best course of action for incoming first-year students is to take all of the placement exams you think you may need for your first year at Yale during the summer before you come to campus.

Do I Need to Take a Fall or Spring Placement Exam: Rules of Thumb for Currently Enrolled Students

  • Only some currently enrolled students may need to take a placement exam in the fall (in advance of spring course registration) or the spring (in advance of course registration for the following fall). Mainly, only students with prior study of a subject but who did not take a placement exam in that subject or receive a departmental placement in the previous year need to take a placement exam.
  • Biology, chemistry, economics, and physics do not offer fall or spring placement exams, and students who took a summer placement exam in those subjects within the past year do not need to take a placement exam.
  • The mathematics placement exam is open in the fall and spring for students who seek to take a calculus course within the subsequent three semesters or intervening summer, but do not currently have a departmental placement (by having completed the pre-requisite course at Yale or having taken the math placement exam within the previous two years).
  • Some language programs not listed on the Placement Exams and Information may allow placement exams by request; 
  • Students wishing to begin a new language but who do not have prior study of that language simply enroll in L1; no placement exam is required
  • Questions? Please use the contact information on the Placement Exams and Information webpage or consult the director of undergraduate studies to inquire.

Accommodations
Students with documented disabilities may request accommodations for placement testing through the Student Accessibility Services office. Please contact the SAS office through the online registration form to submit your request at least one week before your placement test.