COMPASS®

COMPASS® is an untimed computer-adaptive college placement test.  Students’ skill levels in mathematics are quickly evaluated.  The benefits of COMPASS® testing for students who are truly interested in attending college will be the placement of students in appropriate college credit-bearing mathematics courses.  Meeting the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (WVHEPC) benchmarks on COMPASS® allows students to be placed in college credit- bearing mathematics courses and not in remediation courses.  As a computer-adaptive test, the COMPASS® program adjusts the item difficulty to the skills of the individual student, eliminating items that are too easy or difficult and that contribute little to the student’s score.  Such flexibility reduces the number of items and testing time, while maintaining the accuracy of the results. 

The adaptive nature of COMPASS® means that few students receive the same items or even the same number of items. Students begin testing with a medium level difficulty question. If the student answers correctly, a more difficult level question is provided to the student. If the student answers the medium level question incorrectly, a less difficult question is provided to the student. The software continues to provide more and less difficult questions until a reliable score is obtained.