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Placement Surveys

Placement surveys help us learn what topics you covered in your high school courses, so that you can start in the best course for you at Bowdoin.

  • You do not receive a grade for the surveys, and they do not become a part of your transcript.
  • All incoming students must complete the Information Literacy and Quantitative Skills surveys, as well as any subjects you studied in high school, including sciences, languages, and music.
  • You will not be able to complete registration until you have completed these surveys. 
STOP AND WATCH:

Hear from Bowdoin faculty about how they use placement surveys.

We urge you to take these in the spirit that they are intended, which is to accurately reflect your knowledge and exposure to the subjects.

Cheating or gaming them will make it more difficult for you to be placed in the appropriate courses and will constitute a violation of Bowdoin's Honor Code.

Which placement surveys must I take?

  • Information Literacy and Quantitative Skills are REQUIRED of all students.
    • Note that the Quantitative Skills placement also includes questions that the Math and Economics departments use to place students.
  • If you plan to enroll in any biology, chemistry, computer science, or physics courses—at any time in your Bowdoin career—you must complete the placement survey for that subject.
  • If you studied any of the following languages in high school, or if you speak them at home, you should complete the placement survey for that language:
    • Chinese
    • Classics (Greek or Latin)
    • French
    • German
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Russian
    • Spanish
  • The music department offers a survey that is required for enrollment in some music courses including music theory, songwriting, and song analysis.

Which placement surveys should I take?

Here's the deal: maybe you are taking a computer science class right now and you are totally over it.

You cannot imagine ever taking another computer science class, much less in college, when there are so many great courses to choose from.

Now fast-forward to registration during your sophomore year, where you notice a cool class that fulfills one of your graduation requirements:

Creating Future Worlds: Computing, Ethics, and Society

Topics include net neutrality, information privacy and data harvesting, algorithmic bias, autonomous systems, intellectual property, cybercrime, digital disparities, tech corporate culture, and individual professional conduct in a diverse tech workplace.

That sounds awesome.

The only problem? You never took your computer science placement survey. Now you have to take it in advance of your registration time, while also writing two papers, rehearsing for a concert, and working on a group project. 

Because Workday is first come, first serve, students realizing that they need a placement right at registration time means that the department must drop everything so the student can do the placement, the department can determine the score and get it posted—and by then seats are gone.

Take our advice: take the placement survey for any and every subject in which you have academic experience.

You cannot fail them! 
No one is judging you!
Who cares!
Just do it now!

How do I see what courses I placed into based on the surveys?

By July 25, 2025, you’ll be able to view your placements:

  1. Log in to Workday, click your photo in the upper-right corner, and select “View Profile.”
  2. Click the Academics menu on the left-hand side of the page, and then visit your "External Records" tab.
    • You may need to click “More” to see this tab.
  3. Look under Bowdoin Placement Survey to see which classes you can register for in the Fall or in later semesters.

Note that the External Record tab is also where you see AP and IB scores that you submitted.

  • If some or all your AP or IB scores are missing, please contact the testing agency (such as College Board) and ask them to release your scores to Bowdoin.
  • Bowdoin policies governing credit for AP and IB scores can be found under Credit for Pre-matriculation Exams.

What if I have questions about the placement I received?

Many departments also are offering placement Zooms, which are online drop-in sessions during which you can ask questions about your results, or about the courses that you were placed into.

Up Next: the First-Year Writing Seminar

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