SIPA: School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University

Proficiency/Placement Exam Policies and Procedures

Proficiency/Placement exams allow SIPA students to demonstrate competence in a number of subjects so that they can be exempted from course requirements in either the core curriculum or their concentration. A student who takes and passes a proficiency exam is exempt from taking that course and may substitute another course. Passing a proficiency exam exempts you from taking a class, but does not grant you credit towards your degree. Since it takes one to two weeks to get your exam results, you should register for the classes that you are taking the exam in and attend the class until you have been notified that you have passed the exam.

Proficiency/Placement exams may only be taken once; if you fail, you must take the course. Open to MIA / MPA students. Each semester, exams are offered for the following subjects and languages:

Quantitative Analysis: SIPAU6500 Quantitative Analysis II: SIPA U6501

Accounting: SIPA U6200

Economics for IA & PA: SIPA U4200/U4201 Economics for IA & PA: SIPA U6400/U6401 Note: Students who pass these placement exams are still required to take 6 credits of other Economics classes to substitute for the Economics core. See Policy on Advanced Standing in Economics below for further details.

Spanish, French, German & Portuguese Language exams open to MIA students or MPA students concentrating in EPD Note: Proficiency/ Placement exams in other languages may be arranged through the departments teaching those languages. You can find each department contact on the Columbia website or consult the listings of department contacts posted on the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) bulletin board.

For SPRING 2013, the exams can be taken on any of the following dates:

Week before Classes

• Thursday, Jan 17 : 1 – 4pm in Room 1501 IAB
• Friday, Jan 18:  9am – 12pm in Room 1501 IAB

First Week of Classes

• Thursday, Jan 24: 1 – 4pm in Room 1501 IAB
• Friday, Jan 25: 9am – 12pm in Room 1501 IAB
  

Quantitative Analysis II: SIPA U6501 exam will only be available on Friday Jan 25, 2013

The Quantitative Analysis I exam takes 3 hours. Please bring a non-graph/non-programmable calculator; a booklet of tables is provided.

The Quantitative Analysis II exam is a two part 5 hour exam. The first 2 hours is a written exam in the morning from 9am to 11am followed by a 3 hour exam on STATA from 2pm to 5pm.  Students must bring their own laptop for the second part of the exam.

The Economics exams (MICRO & MACRO) take 1.5 hours each. Please bring a non-graph/non-programmable calculator.

The Accounting exam takes 3.5 hours. Please bring a non-graph/non-programmable calculator.

Language exams take 2 hours with oral exam to be scheduled sometime before registration ends; No dictionaries allowed.

WALK-INS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO TAKE THE EXAM.

You must sign up in order to take the proficiency/placement exams: Sign-up sheets are posted outside the Office of Student Affairs on the 6th floor during Orientation and Registration weeks. Please contact Alejandro Guerrero (ag2635@columbia.edu) for more information.

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To study for exams: To get an idea of the material covered on the exams, you can review a recent syllabus for the course online at http://sipa.columbia.edu/academics/courses/.

A message from the Statistics Department: This exam is similar to a comprehensive final examination given in an introductory statistics course. The text we use is Moore and McCabe’s “Introduction to the Practice of Statistics” (chapters 1-11), although any survey text should suffice in terms of preparation.

Policy on Advanced Standing in Economics: All students are required to fulfill 6 credits of Economics coursework as part of the SIPA degree, regardless of academic or professional background. Students who have completed graduate level Economics courses (Micro and/or Macro) and were awarded a graduate degree (outside Columbia University) may apply to have those courses counted as ELECTIVE transfer credit. If a student feels they have sufficient knowledge of Economics and would like to waive out of the core Economics courses in order to take more advanced coursework, they may take the Economics Placement Exam (previously referred to as a Proficiency exam). The Placement Exam consists of a Micro section and a Macro section. Students may elect to take one or both of the sections, but may only take each section once during their academic career. If a student is successful in passing one or both sections of the Economics Placement Exam, they are still required to complete an alternate Economics course(s) (3-6 credits) to fulfill the SIPA masters degree Economics requirement.
To prepare for the test you can study these textbooks.

• Microeconomics: Besanko and Brautigan
• Macroeconomics: Bernanke and Abel
• Microeconomics: Pyndyck and Rubenfeld
• Macroeconomics: Blanchard

Language proficiency exams consist of two parts: written and oral. The written part takes 2 hours and consists of grammar, translation, vocabulary and reading comprehension (at the level comparable to an undergraduate Intermediate II course). If you pass the written part of the exam you will be contacted by email to schedule the oral exam. It might be helpful to take a placement exam first through the specific language department to determine whether or not to take the proficiency exam.