Calculus Placement
Most students entering Brown will fit somewhere into
our
calculus sequence. If you think you are one of these students, you
should follow the instructions on this webpage.
If you do
not feel like some version of calculus is an appropriate course for you
to take, but you still want to take math at Brown, you should send
email
to calcplacement@brown.edu.
We are especially interested in hearing from you if
you have
taken enough advanced math classes during high school so that you
can skip our calculus sequence entirely. Also, even if you are not
especially advanced in math, but wonder what math options you have besides
calculus, you should feel free to ask us about it. For inquiries about courses
past calculus, you should contact the current Director of Undergraduate
Studies, whose e-mail address you can find here.
If you are an incoming first-year student, and you received a 4 or 5 on one
of the Advanced Placement (AP) calculus exams, please read
this note;
these scores may limit your course options.
If you are still reading this page, then
the most likely situation is that you will fit somewhere in our
calculus series. We have a variety of tools available to help you
determine where you fit in the calculus series. (NOTE: Several of the tools
below reference Math 0170, which has been removed from our course offerings for now; students considering Math 0170 should take Math 0100 or Math 0190 instead.)
- The first tool is an interactive
page
that asks you a series of questions about the calculus concepts you
have seen and then makes a recommendation.
This is the quickest way to get an initial placement suggestion.
-
While the interactive page will give you an approximate placement, we encourage you to take our self-graded online Calculus
Placement Exam. This will help you review some calculus, and it will give a more accurate sense of what you currently know, which is sometimes different from what topics you've seen.
- For more information about calculus placement, you can watch
this video that
summarizes our various calculus and linear algebra courses and how they
fit together.
Finally, if you have questions after consulting the
resources
above, you can e-mail calcplacement@brown.edu, or during orientation
you can attend the Calculus Placement Advising Session. Note that because our
placement exam is online, we will not administer an exam during that session.
We recommend taking the online exam in advance and bringing your results with you, as that will hopefully help us lead you to the right decision.
BONUS RESOURCES:
- If you intend to take calculus but do not feel confident about trigonometry (which is a prerequisite), our Trigonometry Boot Camp may be helpful.
- Similarly, if you plan to take a course that assumes knowledge of vectors, our Vector Boot Camp may help.