Placement Validity Study
Validate your placement decisions
ACES Placement Validity Studies give you the information you need to confirm or improve your current course placement policies.
Placement Validity Studies:
- Evaluate your existing placement policies
- Inform future placement decisions
Two types of Placement Validity Studies
Predictive placement validity studies typically evaluate student scores on the SAT™, SAT Subject Tests™, and ACCUPLACER® tests to predict performance in a course. AP® test scores can also be utilized when comparing course grades for students who took a course with or without taking the prerequisite course.
Concurrent placement validity studies evaluate CLEP® exam scores and corresponding course grades to determine the probability that students who receive specific CLEP scores have the same level of ability as those who successfully completed the college-level course.
Free, customized reports
Design your own study to meet the specific needs of your institution. Placement Validity Studies are free and available online. Follow these four simple steps:
- Determine which type of placement study you would like to use.
- Request a study and customize it using this online form.
- Submit your data directly and securely over the Internet.
- Retrieve your report when you receive an email telling you it's ready.
You can now easily request an ACES placement validity study using SAT™ scores as predictors—without submitting an additional data file—when you have already submitted an admission validity study data file that includes students’ coursework information.
You can take advantage of this efficient option provided that the course(s) you are interested in examining has at least 30 students with valid grades in that course. (Note that it is often necessary to have at least 50 students in your sample, depending on the number of predictors chosen, as the results of your analyses will be more stable.) The ACES placement validity study request web page will prompt you for your admission study request number and password in order to access your previously submitted data file. If you have misplaced this information, please contact aces@info.collegeboard.org.
Learn more about requesting a Placement Validity Study.