Placement Process

If you indicated in your admissions materials that you use English, but it is not your primary language or mother tongue, you will receive an email and letter, sometime in late May or early June, notifying you that you need to take the English placement exam to determine which first-year English course will be most useful for you. You must take the exam before your advisor can register you for a course.

The exam will be available from May 31st until July 25, but please check with your advisor for your college's deadline for completion of the test. If you take the test by July 1st, you will receive your placement by July 8th. If you take the test by July 25th, you will receive your placement by July 29th.

The exam is located on CMU's Blackboard site. To access the test:

1. Go to http://www.cmu.edu/blackboard

2. Enter your CMU ID and password.

3. The exam should be listed under "Courses" as "F11-English Placement Exam." Click on this course link and follow the instructions found there.

Please note: The exam must be completed within 24 hours after you begin, so plan to take the exam only when you have 24 hours in which to complete it. Most students in previous years report spending 5 to 6 hours on the exam.

If you feel you may not be required to take the English placement exam, please email us <engfirst@andrew.cmu.edu> immediately. We will then email you a set of questions that will give us the information we need to determine whether you are required to take the exam. These questions will take less than 10 minutes to answer.

If you have any questions or encounter any problems with the online exam, please email us.