<p>Here’s how it answers your question:</p>
<p>It reminds you that there may be a world out there where lots of people know more than you do about a whole lot of things, including economics and how to teach economics to college students. In that world, the students may not actually know what they don’t know. In that world, the teachers may not be trying to force you to waste your time. They may want you actually to learn economics. </p>
<p>So when the faculty designs a placement test, it isn’t “hard” or “easy” or anything like that. It’s simply a good, fast way to determine whether you have the kind of command over what is taught in a particular course consistent with having taken that course and understood the main things in it at least at a B-ish level. To do that, they don’t have to give you a long test with a lot of tricks in it. They aren’t trying to catch you, or to grade you relative to anyone else. They’re just trying to see if you already know the important stuff they would otherwise be trying to teach you in that course. Studying for it is beside the point. You either know what they want you to know – really know it – or you don’t. If you don’t, you probably aren’t going to learn it by studying. And if you know it, you won’t have to study to show that. </p>
<p>That’s what I think the Chicago placement tests are like, at least the ones I have seen. One of my kids took one, and he knew what his placement was as soon as he read the test. There were only three questions: One was easy, one was challenging but he knew how to answer it, and he had never seen anything like the third. Answering the questions he knew took him 10-15 minutes; answering the one he didn’t know would have taken the better part of a quarter.</p>
<p>When they say that people who get 4s or 5s on the AP test usually don’t place out of the course, it’s probably because the courses they teach are different from the AP courses, even if one of the books is the same. Maybe you really have been studying it at a University of Chicago level, but most people haven’t.</p>
<p>What’s more, one of the worst things you could do would be to “fool” them into placing you out of a course, because you will wind up at sea in the next course up. You’ll have a terrible time, probably not do well, and never learn the stuff as well as you would have if you had started at the beginning. Which of course may affect everything you do later, too.</p>
<p>So . . . trust the process. If you have already learned what you need to know, that will be obvious. If it isn’t obvious, you haven’t learned it, even if you thought you had. You may be all grumbly and ticked off for a week, but for the rest of your life you will probably know economics better for NOT having passed the placement test. And the chances of your being bored and unchallenged in the courses you would have to take are pretty slim.</p>