Welcome to the COS placement exam site.

The placement exam consists of a series of questions spanning the breadth of material covered in COS 126 (Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach). Some of the questions ask you to distill large concepts into simple explanations, while others ask you to complete a calculation or demonstrate some other practical application of the course material.

This placement exam is considered "closed book", that is, no outside resources (including, but not limited to, class notes, textbooks, and internet resources) are permitted. Submission of the answer to each question affirms that you have not received improper assistance, equivalent to signing the standard affirmation at the end of other required work (i.e., "This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations."). Alongside the admonition against violating your honor, it is also a grievous breach of the University's Acceptable Use Policy to tamper with the placement exam or its evaluation in any way, particularly any attempts to hack the web infrastructure.

As general advice, use these questions to demonstrate your familiarity with the COS 126 topics they cover. Our guiding expectation for placement out of COS 126 is that of a student who took COS 126 in the spring, did well, but then went away for the summer and didn't think much about computer science. In keeping with this expectation, no question should take more than a minute or two to answer. Don't over-answer — though you are given a large upper-limit to your response length, most questions can be answered reasonably in a paragraph or even a sentence. If you do not know the answer to a question, briefly show what knowledge of the topic you do have and then move on.

Once you have submitted an answer to a problem, that answer is final: there is no way to go back to that problem to amend your answer.

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